


Still Into You

by baridalive



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Fluff, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Making Out, Regret, a very non-valentine's themed valentine's fic, guitarist!mark, just a lot of angst honestly, someone give mark a hug, the dreamies are the comedic relief, vocalist!hyuck, yukhei is the mvp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22792162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baridalive/pseuds/baridalive
Summary: Mark writes a song to give himself closure, but it's never that simple when it comes to Donghyuck.(In short: they find each other, they fall apart, they find each other again, and this time it's going to take a lot more than an offer and an apology to fix four years of heartbreak)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, minor Lee Jeno/Huang Ren Jun - Relationship
Comments: 72
Kudos: 440





	Still Into You

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a short, cutesy little valentine's day fic. and then my hand slipped and next thing i knew it was a 22k monstrosity with angst and sadness with a vague hint of valentine's day. are we surprised, though? no, no we are not.  
> i used a bunch of songs for inspiration for the fic (a lot of them are mentioned in there somewhere, but here's a comprehensive list that no one asked for anyway)  
> still into you — paramore  
> (stop) just love — ustheduo (this was originally going to be the title of the fic)  
> somebody else — the 1975 (the song that started it all)  
> come back home — anthony ramos (hyuck's song)  
> remind me to forget — kygo & miguel (mark's song)  
> come sail away — styx  
> here comes the sun — the beatles  
> you’re my best friend — queen (the markhyuck theme song tbh)  
> i go crazy — orla gartland (this is high school mark's anthem abt hyuck and no one can change my mind)
> 
> the concept for this fic originated from [this tweet](https://twitter.com/first8id/status/1198701084598063105?s=20)  
> SO A BIG SHOUTOUT TO REI AND RJ I LOVE YOU BOTH
> 
> ANYWAY! happy (really late) valentine's day! preorder neozone!

With the final kick of the bass drum, Mark strums the last chord, and it’s all over. The last concert before Mark graduates finishes with a bang as confetti falls from the ceiling and the audience goes wild. 

Mark releases his guitar, letting it hang from the strap. He turns back to face his bandmates — no, his best friends — and he can only grin like a maniac when he meets their eyes, relishing in the moment. Donghyuck, the first one to move, rushes from his place at the mic stand in front and nearly leaps into Mark’s arms. His smile is wild, his hair tangled and sweaty, but the glittering shreds of confetti that rain from the ceiling land amongst his soft brown curls and the blinding lights of the stage dim behind the glow of his smile. He’s beautiful like this. It’s a shame Mark can’t tell him that.

Somewhere in the background, Renjun is saying goodnight to the crowd in his mic, but it does nothing to stop Donghyuck from leaning in and pressing a kiss to Mark’s cheek, not too far off from the corner of his lips. Mark can’t even find it within himself to be mad — mostly because Donghyuck was the one who wanted to keep _whatever was going on between the two of them_ a secret — and he just grins harder as Donghyuck buries his face in the side of Mark’s neck out of embarrassment, letting the cheers and the sparkles wash over them.

“Mark!” Renjun calls his name, finally drawing his attention to where he remains center stage, holding a mic. “Any last words?” 

Donghyuck sheepishly lets go of him and Mark finally has the mind to check if his guitar is alright from being squished between them before he walks over to Renjun, accepting the mic. A hush falls over the audience — most of them know that Mark is graduating, leaving his spot as the guitarist in the band a little up in the air, and phones fly up to record his words because as far as anyone knows, they might be his last as the leader of The Dreamers.

“It’s been a wild few years, hasn’t it?” Mark asks, looking around as he’s met with an enthusiastic roar from the crowd. “For those of you who don’t know, this band started out as my passion project. I found an amazing group of musicians and decided that if they were as crazy as I was, I was going to take their enormous amounts of talent as far as it could carry us. It’s been going on five years of insanity: ups and downs, equal parts disappointment and success, but if we’ve gotten this far, I can’t wait to see how much further we’ll all go—”

“And before we’re here for another hour while Mark waxes poetic about us and you all, let’s hear it for our guitarist and amazing leader!” Donghyuck interrupts, snatching the mic straight from Mark’s hands. Mark can do nothing but shake his head and laugh, biting his lip to keep himself from crying like a fool on the stage of the biggest arena they’ve ever performed in. Donghyuck tugs out Mark’s in-ear just in time for the audience to absolutely _erupt_ in hollars and shouts for him, and Mark puts a hand over his mouth to cover his watery smile, tears threatening to spill over as he feels the adoration roll over in waves. Donghyuck rests a hand on his shoulder, using the one with the mic to beckon the rest of the band closer around him. “Thank you all so much for your unending support because we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you!”

Mark laughs through his fingers, swiping at the corners of his eyes as subtly as he can, but he’s sure he’ll see videos of it on Twitter later — if they’re not there already. He extends a hand to Donghyuck who flashes him a smile and hands the mic back. 

“We love you all so much!” Mark calls, his voice shaky enough that the crowd gives an audible _aww_. That almost makes the dam break right then and there, but he holds it in. “We are The Dreamers! Thank you and goodnight!”

Jisung throws up a peace sign and Donghyuck blows out a kiss to the crowd just before the stage lights go dark and they’re ushered offstage, back through the wings and out into their dressing room, all jostling into each other through the narrow hallways.

Jaemin lets out a whoop as they shut the door behind them, waving his arms around and nearly jumping on Chenle’s back. Donghyuck and Renjun join them — singing very loudly yet somehow completely in the right key — some Queen song that Mark doesn’t have the energy to distinguish at the moment. He relaxes back against the door, crossing his arms as he watches his best friends go nuts, the crazy grins never once faltering.

“You doing alright?” Jeno sidles up next to Mark, nudging him with his shoulder. 

“Yeah, Jen,” Mark replies. “I think I really am.”

“You love them, don’t you?” Jeno smiles, following Mark’s gaze to where the other five members have piled onto the couch, all trying to watch something on Jaemin’s phone. “I know I do.”

“It’s indescribable, but I think love is the closest word we have for it.” He shrugs in reply. “I’ll write a song about it, I’m sure.”

“Of course you will,” Jeno snorts. There’s a pregnant pause before he speaks again. “Has Donghyuck talked to you yet?”

“Huh?” Mark turns to Jeno. “Has he talked to me about what?”

“He hasn’t—” Jeno’s eyes widen before he shakes his head. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything, yeah?”

“O…kay?” Mark draws out the word, but their conversation is interrupted when Jisung shrieks at an ungodly volume, dropping his phone right on Renjun’s stomach because he’s lying over Jisung’s legs. “What’s going on?”

 _“You and Donghyuck kissed?”_ Jisung’s eyes widen comically as he scrambles to pick up his phone before turning the screen in Mark’s direction.

“We… _what?”_ Mark squints, moving closer until he can see the short video that Jisung has pulled up. It’s at an angle almost behind Mark’s head, and admittedly, from where Donghyuck has his head tilted and how their bodies are pressed together, it’s not a completely inconceivable conclusion that their lips are meeting instead of just Donghyuck’s lips and Mark’s cheek before Donghyuck nestles his head into the crook of Mark’s neck. 

“Wait wait lemme see!” Chenle reaches over and snatches Jisung’s phone right out of his hand, pulling it so close to his face that the screen nearly bumps his nose. “I can’t believe I missed that!”

“We didn’t kiss, Chenle,” Donghyuck sighs. “It was a heat of the moment thing and I pecked him on the cheek. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it.”

Silence befalls the room as the band collectively looks between Mark and Donghyuck, deciding whether or not to believe them. Mark just shakes his earnestly, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach when Donghyuck starts making jokes about him _actually_ _kissing Mark-hyung, like can you believe that?_ and how _I could never kiss him because he’s too weird._ Mark knows the insults are a defense mechanism — one that’s been ingrained in his system since before Mark even met him in primary school, one that he uses when he’s uncomfortable because comedy is how he copes — but that doesn’t stop the uncomfortable sting of the words crawling all the way into his chest, nestling up inside his ribs, pressing against his heart until it gets much hard to deny that they actually hurt.

Thankfully, or maybe not so thankfully, the boys buy the way Donghyuck brushes it off as nothing more than the product of the adrenaline rush. The fans seem to love it anyway; in less than an hour _#markhyuck_ is trending on Twitter and any actual concern about the two of them has faded away from the minds of their bandmates. Mark has to turn his phone off when his messages start blowing up — most of them regarding the video — even as more angles of it are released revealing that it was no more than a peck on the cheek. 

His mind is everywhere as they finish cleaning up their gear from the venue, and it’s still not completely clear as they all pile their stuff, followed by themselves, into Mark’s pickup. Jisung and Chenle take the back seat, keeping an eye on the precarious piles of equipment. Donghyuck slides into shotgun first even though Renjun had called it back when they were in the dressing room, leaving the other vocalist to shove Jaemin over to avoid sitting between him and Jeno. Mark makes a mental note to ask about that later but right now all he can think about is the cassette that Donghyuck slides into the player.

It’s an old mixtape Mark made — one of his first, actually — and the one he gave to Donghyuck in middle school when they used to take walks to the nearby farmer’s field late at night. Mark’s dad’s boombox would rest between them as they stargazed, murmuring to each other about every topic under the sun. It was their escape when life at home got tough or the pressures of school became too heavy, and as life grew up with them, it became their unofficial friendship playlist. Mark finds himself having to take a deep breath before he can turn the key to start the ignition, ignoring the way Donghyuck’s gaze burns into the size of his head. 

The sound of Styx’s _Come Sail Away_ fills the silence of the ride back out of the city and into the small suburb where they all live. Everyone except for Mark and Donghyuck has long since fallen asleep, but even Donghyuck’s struggling to keep his eyes open as Mark takes the exit off the highway. It’s edging the cusp of midnight by the time Mark finally pulls into Jisung’s driveway, the waning moon casting a comforting glow over their quiet city.

Mark kills the engine and unbuckles himself, hopping out to go wake up the snoozing duo in the bed of the drunk, half-nestled under Jisung’s bass and Chenle’s keyboard, a pair of earbuds keeping them connected. He gently shakes them awake, telling them to go inside and get some sleep because he’s still making them come to rehearsal the next morning. They mumble a vague agreement, and Mark says he can take their equipment back to his place since they’re just going to use it there next anyway.

Jisung throws his arms around Mark in an exhaustion-induced hug that he’ll probably deny ever having given later when he’s coherent. 

“You’re the best, hyung,” he mumbles sleepily into the collar of Mark’s shirt. 

Mark just holds him tighter.

It only lasts another moment before Chenle is tugging Jisung away so he can get his own hug from their leader, and Mark laughs quietly into Chenle’s hair, only now realizing just how much he’s grown — how much they’ve _all_ grown. 

Another blink later and he’s gone, letting Jisung lead him inside as he waves goodbye to Mark. After a moment’s pause, Mark climbs back into the driver’s seat with a little sigh. As always, he waits until he knows they made it inside safely before he puts the pickup into reverse and pulls out of the driveway. The Beatles’ _Here Comes the Sun_ drifts softly out of the speakers as they drive down the familiar streets to find Jaemin’s house, the volume turned nearly all the way down so as to not prematurely wake the snoozing trio in the backseat, Renjun and Jeno both resting their heads on Jaemin’s shoulders while Jaemin’s head leans over the back of the seat, his neck curved in an uncomfortable-looking position that Mark grimaces at when he sees it in the mirror.

Somehow when the truck comes to a rumbling stop in Jaemin’s driveway, both Jaemin manages to extract himself without waking either of the other two, giving Mark a hug and Donghyuck a flying kiss before he disappears inside as well. Renjun is the same way when it’s his turn, giving Jeno a lingering look and Mark a quick hug before he scampers away. 

It’s only once Mark’s old pickup finally grumbles into Donghyuck’s driveway that the goodbye doesn’t seem as easy for some reason. They sit there next to each other until the final notes of Queen’s _You’re My Best Friend_ fade out and the cassette clicks to a finish like it always does. 

Mark can’t bring himself to look at Donghyuck, keeping his eyes fixed on where the truck’s headlights cast circles of yellow light just above the old crack in Donghyuck’s garage door from when Donghyuck accidentally backed into it when he got his permit, making it look like the door is staring blankly back at him, unpitying. 

“Mark,” Donghyuck starts softly, all-too-aware of Mark’s younger brother sleeping in the backseat. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he replies simply. His hands tighten around the steering wheel until it almost hurts.

“Is this about the kiss—” Donghyuck huffs, but Mark cuts him off.

“It’s about everything between us. I don’t know what’s going on anymore, to be honest. I told you I loved you, you walked away, and the next week we’re back to making out in the fucking practice rooms at school? I’m getting whiplash from this, Hyuck, and not in a good way.” Mark still doesn’t turn his head to look at Donghyuck, but he can see him slump in his seat out of his peripheral vision.

“I know, Mark, I know.”

“If you know then why do you keep _doing it?”_ Mark cries, but Jeno grumbles in his sleep, shifting slightly, and he drops his voice. “I don’t get it! Do you get some sort of sick pleasure out of messing with my head like this? Do you _enjoy—”_

“No, I don’t enjoy it!” Donghyuck hisses. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you, I promise. Look at me, Mark.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I do, I might forgive you,” he whispers, blinking hard. Fingers that aren’t his own gently touch his jaw, guiding it so he’s facing Donghyuck, and Mark lets out a shaky breath when their eyes meet.

“I want you to be okay, you know that right? Tonight… I kissed you at the show by accident, and I’m sorry if I broke a boundary. Just say the word and I’m gone, alright?”

Mark wants to laugh. Donghyuck should know that no matter what happens, he could never actually wish him away. He couldn’t even during their huge fight a couple of summers ago that nearly made Mark quit the band, but that’s not a wound he intends to rehash right now. Right now, the only thing he intends to do is kiss Donghyuck because at this point, they’re better at communicating through that than they are at talking. Granted, that isn’t saying much because both of their communication skills leave something to be desired, but it’s a start.

Donghyuck holds up his pinkie finger between them — an offering.

“I promise I never meant to hurt you, Mark.”

A sigh.

Mark locks his pinkie with Donghyuck’s.

“I know,” he whispers. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.”

“What can I do to fix it?” Donghyuck asks, tilting his head but not letting go of Mark’s pinkie.

“Fuck, I don’t know, Hyuck,” Mark takes his other hand off the wheel and rubs it over his face. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Well… do you know if I can kiss you?” he replies, voice as soft and compelling as ever. Mark has never been a weaker man as he nods shortly, and lets Donghyuck lean in to meld their lips together. 

Mark is weak as he lets himself melt into Donghyuck’s touch across the center console, winding his free hand through Donghyuck’s messy curls because it’s what feels right, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. 

The smart choice would have been to not kiss him at all, but Mark is long gone past that point of no return because all of his senses are completely filled with Donghyuck, and there’s no escape even if he wants. All he can do is hold on as Donghyuck licks into his mouth, tasting Mark in a way that makes him feel like it’s the first time they’ve kissed, like everything is all new again and he has to explore every nook and cranny of Mark in a near-methodical fashion.

“Hyuck!” Mark scolds quietly when Donghyuck nips on the fragile skin just behind his ear a little too hard. He smiles unapologetically in return before kissing him again, harsh and bruising with such force that Donghyuck is halfway over the gearshift all of a sudden, pressing Mark back up against his door with one hand on his thigh and the other planted on the window next to his head to keep him steady. 

They kiss until Mark’s lips are swollen and numb, both of them covered in little bruises and bites below the collar, and their chests are both heaving for air. Donghyuck’s back cracks loudly as he sits back in his seat, making Mark stifle a laugh, and it’s clear that they’re both feeling lighter than before. 

Mark pushes himself up, taking his own turn to lean across the console, pressing his forehead to Donghyuck’s gently. They stay like that for a moment, hands still clutching while they bask in the simple presence of each other; Mark’s gut flips when Donghyuck places a gentle kiss against the tip of his nose.

“I love you,” Mark says quietly, cracking his eyes open.

“I know you do.” Donghyuck smiles sadly, pulling him back in for another kiss, softer his time. There’s something he’s trying to say with it, something he’s desperately trying to tell Mark but can’t seem to find the exact movements to do so. Tears burn viciously at the back of Mark’s eyes and he can’t even explain why when Donghyuck pulls back and wipes gently under his lower lashes in question.

There are so many things Mark wants to say right now, while he’s cradling Donghyuck so close to him, while their brilliant, shining facades have been stripped down to their raw selves, bared completely for each other to see. He can’t seem to fathom the right words to string together that might make everything be okay, so instead he swallows hard and says something else:

“Rehearsal tomorrow morning.” The vulnerable moment shatters back into reality. Mark can almost see the walls going back up behind Donghyuck’s eyes, and he allows himself to lament the loss for a few spare seconds before he pulls back, gently taking his hand from Donghyuck’s. 

“Right… Saturday morning rehearsals…” Donghyuck nods slowly, turning away and climbing out of the truck. Mark watches him until he disappears inside his front door, and he drops his head into his hands and inhales weakly, only then noticing his entire body was shaking.

He decides to grant himself another moment of quiet before he goes home, but it’s interrupted by a knock on the window next to him. He looks up just as Donghyuck opens the door, and he doesn’t even have a chance to react before Donghyuck’s kissing him again. He lets out a little embarrassing noise from the back of his throat as Donghyuck tugs him down at just the right angle by the grip in his hair, and flicks the side of Donghyuck’s neck in return when he feels his smile.

Mark gave up trying to read Donghyuck hours ago — it’s impossible between all of the mixed signals he’s been handing out left and right, and Mark would much rather just kiss him than strain his tired mind into trying to figure him out. It’s not worth it when Donghyuck so clearly doesn’t want to be read, but Mark’s sure he can finagle the reasons out of him in the morning tomorrow.

Donghyuck pulls away gently, and Mark laughs when he opens his eyes to see the string of saliva hanging between their mouths. He bats it away before pressing his lips to Donghyuck’s forehead gingerly.

“Go get some sleep, yeah?” Mark says, his voice finally beginning to show signs of weariness. 

Donghyuck opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but closes it in the end and simply delivers a small peck to the underside of Mark’s jaw, whispering something into his skin that Mark doesn’t quite catch. Before he can ask about it, Donghyuck is already backing away slowly toward his front stoop where he stops to lean against his front door and wave to Mark.

Mark barely remembers to close the door to the truck before he starts it up again, reversing out of the driveway and onto the street. Donghyuck puts a hand over his mouth as he watches Mark go, and if he’d been closer, Mark might’ve been able to see the moonlit tears spilling over Donghyuck’s cheeks. But he isn’t and he doesn’t, so he drives away without looking back, thoughts of sleeping enticing his mind away from Donghyuck.

The next morning, the band groupchat has made it perfectly clear that them all meeting in Jeno and Mark’s garage as usual is going to be less of an actual rehearsal and more of a pretense of a rehearsal mixed with a celebration of the concert from the previous night and some possible noodling around on the instruments. Jeno and Mark’s parents are gone on business, which doesn’t happen infrequently at this point, which leaves them with the whole house to themselves to make as much noise as they want to — as long as they don’t piss off the neighbors, which happened once and the trouble they got into wasn’t worth it at all.

Mark’s just finishing setting up his guitar amp when Jaemin walks in, linking arms with Jisung and Chenle who are all laughing about something they were discussing in the car. Jaemin must have given them a ride this morning because of how close they live. Not even a moment later, Renjun pulls up to join them. He steps out of the car wearing a leather jacket and Mark nearly has to pick up Jeno’s jaw from the floor. He shoves his brother towards Renjun because he’s making moon eyes again and Mark is somewhat sick of their obvious pining.

They all watch as Jeno stutters out if Renjun would like to go on a date with him, Jaemin wolf whistles form the background and is immediately slapped on the head by both Jisung and Chenle while Jeno flips him off and Mark laughs from where he’s perched on a stool by his amp, tuning his guitar. Renjun ignores all of them, smiling while he says yes, and that’s that.

A half hour after their scheduled start time is when Mark starts to get worried because they’re still a man short of a full band. Donghyuck has yet to show, and although he enjoys showing up fashionably late occasionally, it’s never without texting the groupchat with a flimsy excuse. But as the minutes creep by, Mark starts to get more anxious, nibbling on his lip as he checks his phone, but all of his messages to Donghyuck on every platform are still unread.

It’s only when he’s officially past an hour late that Mark finally stands up, no longer paying attention to where Jisung is trying to play _Smoke on the Water_ in all twelve keys while Jeno plays a swing beat just to screw him up more. 

“Where the hell _is he?”_ he asks, more to himself than to anyone else. He finally resolves to call Donghyuck, and it’s an unspoken rule between the two of them that if one of them calls, it’s an emergency and the other has to pick up. It goes straight to voicemail, which is odd because Donghyuck never turns his phone off. Mark suddenly realizes it’s too quiet in the garage as he takes the phone away from his ear, and he turns back towards the rest of the band to see them all looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Is there something you guys aren’t telling me?”

“Hyung, did…” Jisung starts, but swallows heavily before he continues, “did he not tell you?”

“Did _who_ not tell me _what?”_ Mark snaps, but checks his tone and apologizes. “I’m sorry, Sungie, I’m just worried… Do you know what’s going on?”

“Donghyuck,” Jisung clarifies. “He spoke to all of us individually… we just assumed you knew.”

“That I knew what, Jisung?” Mark is scared by now, not understanding, and the pitying looks that he’s met with when he scans his friend’s faces bring him no comfort. “Is he alright? What’s happening?”

“He—he told us he was going to leave and that he’d break it to all of us one by one, and we just kind of assumed everyone knew by this point because it’s out of character for him to do something like this, let alone without telling _you_ of all people and—” Jisung rambles on, but Mark holds up a hand to stop him.

“Wait, wait, wait! What the fuck do you mean he _left?”_ Mark sets down his guitar on his stool. Jisung throws a panicked look at Jaemin, who puts a hand on his shoulder and helps fill in the gaps.

“Donghyuck left on a flight for Los Angeles earlier this morning… signed a record deal with Capitol earlier this winter under the condition he could finish the tour with our band. They want to make him a star.”

“This isn’t funny if you guys are joking,” Mark warns, but when none of his bandmates back down, he falters. “There’s no way he just upped and left. He wouldn’t— _couldn’t…_ we had plans! I don’t believe this.”

He struggles to keep a grip on reality, panic rising in his throat, stopping his breath in short spurts. Jeno stands up from his stool, reaching forward because he knows Mark is about to have a breakdown, but before anyone can touch him, Mark books it out of the open garage. There’s only one place he can go that will either confirm or deny what Jaemin told him, so he sprints through the backyards of his neighborhood, leaping over fences and dodging plastic playsets before he emerges out onto a cul-de-sac that signifies he’s at the end of Donghyuck’s street. 

A little more jogging brings him to Donghyuck’s front door that he knocks on, but instead of seeing Donghyuck, he’s greeted with the sight of Donghyuck’s older brother.

“Hey, kid,” Johnny greets. “What can I do for you?”

“Where’s Donghyuck?” Mark pants, his hands on his knees.

“What?” Johnny crouches down. “I didn’t catch that—”

“Where is Donghyuck?” Mark grits out each word with unmistakable clarity, and Johnny chuckles, shaking his head.

“Very funny, Mark. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things—”

“Johnny, I’m serious!” Mark cries. “Where is he?” Desperation seeps into his voice, making it crack around the edges, and Johnny pauses.

“He… that little shit didn’t tell you, did he?” Johnny curses.

“No, he didn’t tell me anything! Now what’s going on?”

“Donghyuck was offered a solo record deal with Capitol over in LA, decided it was best for his career and took it basically on the spot. He told me that he’d deal with telling the band about it, but more importantly, telling _you_ about it as soon as possible, but it looks like he got scared and ran instead of facing The Dreamers.”

“No, no,” Mark gasps, shaking his head. “He told the rest of the band, just not me. What did I do wrong, Johnny? Why did he leave? We had plans that we were excited about and now I just… I don’t know where I went wrong,” Mark divulges, his thoughts all over the place. Johnny pulls him into a hug, cradling him like he’s made of the most delicate porcelain.

“It was nothing you did, kiddo,” he whispers. “Please know that you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But if I didn’t push him away, why did he leave? Why did he leave the band… why would he leave me?” His eyes sting, but he blinks rapidly, extracting himself from Johnny’s grip. “I don’t understand… _he promised me.”_

“I don’t have the answers for you, Mark, but I’d give them all to you if I did,” Johnny assures. “Wait here for a second, he left something…” he trails off as he walks away upstairs, taking the steps three at a time, and he’s back in a moment holding a shoebox. “I think he wants you to have this.”

Mark mumbles a thank you, turning around only to be surprised to see the rest of the band piling out of Jaemin’s van. They all look panicked and worried, Jisung more the former and Jeno more the latter, but it doesn’t matter because the moment Mark sniffles, they’re all running up to capture him in a hug. The shoebox ends up pressed uncomfortably between his stomach and Jeno’s, but he can’t be bothered to move it because he’s too busy clinging on to his brother, his face buried in his neck.

Donghyuck has been Mark’s best friend since he first moved to Korea when his father married Jeno’s mother, his expertise in the language minimal and his North American accent still heavy on his tongue when he spoke. Donghyuck was the first one to walk up to him at recess and introduce himself, despite Mark being a grade older. They became inseparable from that day onward, became each other’s support systems, best friends, and soulmates all rolled up into one. When they reached high school, they first came out to each other, and the making out started shortly after under the flimsy guise of gaining experience, and the band kicked off. Despite their constant arguments and petty banter, they wouldn’t trade each other for the world.

At least, that’s what Mark thought.

After he collects himself, an odd sense of pride filling him for not crying, he dismisses rehearsal and tells everyone to go home. Johnny already returned inside and closed the door at some point to leave the boys in peace. Jeno hesitates by Mark’s side, but Mark just shakes his head, gesturing for him to leave with the others as he grips the shoebox with white knuckles. He’s reluctant to leave Mark alone, but after a moment of prolonged eye contact in which a small argument happens nonverbally, Jeno relents and is the last one to climb back into Jaemin’s van before it pulls away.

Mark heads around back of Donghyuck’s house and climbs up into the treehouse that he and Donghyuck had spent a good portion of last summer restoring. It isn’t until he’s seated on the floor, his back pressed up against the wall, that he finally opens the shoebox.

He isn’t sure if the contents surprises him or not, but it’s all familiar anyway: their memories together. From old polaroid photos of them to the first songwriting notebook they shared to the guitar pick Mark caught at a Prince concert and begrudgingly gave to Donghyuck because he looked so sad even though he doesn’t play guitar. It’s a decent portion of their history together that Donghyuck left behind in the box, and Mark realizes that it’s because he wanted to leave Mark himself behind, their memories included.

Mark stuffs the box under his bed that night, not to be touched again for a long time, but it still serves as a reminder.

Over the next few months, The Dreamers release their last song together — just a single, and it’s the first song without Donghyuck, so despite how well it does, it just feels inherently _wrong._ Coincidentally, it’s released just days before Donghyuck’s solo debut single, and their fanbase is thoroughly confused because no announcement from either end was ever made about it. The Dreamers’ instagram hits a million followers, and within a week, they announce an indefinite hiatus from releasing music, saying that they wholeheartedly wish to return but a creative break is needed.

Mark accepts an offer to a college back in his hometown of Vancouver on partial scholarship instead of working for a gap year while Donghyuck finishes high school and then moving together with him to LA to pursue music together. He’s thankful to his mom — by that he means his stepmom, Jeno’s mom, because his biological mother has been out of the picture for a long time — for convincing him to apply to a few colleges just as a backup even though she supported his plan. That fall, he gives a tearful goodbye to the band and his parents and takes a flight to Vancouver all by himself, and has to watch through social media and texts as his boys go back off to high school.

Mark never loses touch with his music completely, but it’s significantly harder for him now because it still hurts to try and make anything without his creative partner. Trying to write his own music reminds him of all the time he spent writing songs curled up in his bed with Donghyuck, the best friend who left him like he didn’t matter at all.

To put it lightly, it crushed him. It took him ages to be willing to get close to people after that, and even after his freshman roommate Yukhei managed to wriggle his way past Mark’s barriers, he still struggles.

As days turn into months and months turn into years, the pain fades. It never leaves entirely, molding itself into a hollow ache in his chest, but it lessens a little most days.

It gets worse when Mark sees Donghyuck’s newest music video trending on Youtube with millions of views, worse when he sees hears his music at a party that sounds nothing like him, worse when he sees pictures of his old friends smiling with Donghyuck on his social media.

It gets better when Mark finally makes his own friends and joins as many clubs as he can around campus — from the robotics team to the swim team, both of which he was a part of during high school at some point but had to drop when he decided to get serious about music.

It gets better when Mark lets himself love his major and studies for endless hours simply because he wants to know more, filling his mind with formulas instead of melodies voluntarily for the first time.

But today, Donghyuck has yet to even cross Mark’s mind because to put it lightly, senior year is kicking his ass. Today he _isn’t_ loving what he’s doing — he’s slogging through just to get it done so he can relax for the weekend and take a break. Unfortunately, his piles of work mean that he has to, for the first time in a while, decline Yukhei’s offer to join him at a party that one of the frats is hosting just across campus where a lot of Mark’s other friends are right now.

He no longer measures how long he studies by the minutes, but by how sore his neck and back are by the time he finally straightens up from his hunched position over his textbook. He knows he needs a break sooner versus later, and somehow Yukhei must intuitively know that because not a second later, his phone rings with Yukhei’s contact lighting up the screen — “Xuxi” with a little sunglasses emoticon. 

He fully expects it to be Hendery calling on Yukhei’s phone, asking Mark to come pick Yukhei up because he’s drunk out of his mind and dancing on the beer pong table again. However, his theory is proven wrong when he picks up the call.

“Hey, Xuxi,” Mark greets, his neck popping as he wiggles around.

“Yo, Mark!” Yukhei’s voice comes through Mark’s phone louder than expected, nearly making him drop it out of surprise. The bass boosted music of the party rattles through the speaker, doing its best to drown out Yukhei’s voice with the vibrations alone.

“What’s up, dude?” Mark replies, tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder so he can close his textbook and stand for the first time in several hours.

“Why aren’t you here? It’s a blast!”

“I just have a lot of work to get through this weekend. You doing alright over there?”

“Yeah, bro, I’m partying it up here with Yangyang and Yuqi and I think that Soyeon and Hendery are lurking around here somewhere…” Yukhei’s voice gets clearer and the music fades, so Mark can only assume that he stepped into another room. “Better question: are _you_ doing alright? You sound kinda down.”

“Nah, I’m alright.”

“You sure? I can bail here and we can just have a movie night with junk food or something so you don’t have to be alone. You have a bad habit of studying.”

“Studying isn’t a bad habit, Xuxi,” Mark laughs. “You should try some time, yeah?”

“Mark, I’m serious!” Yukhei whines in response.

“I know, and seriously, I’m okay. Go have fun tonight! Tell the gang I say hi and not to get too drunk tonight, and I’ll see you on Sunday at the gym?”

“It’s leg day, baby!” he whoops and it makes Mark smile. “Alright, I believe you. Just take care, Mark. I worry about you sometimes.”

“You too, dude.”

Mark puts down his phone on his desk and stretches, and his eyes land upon his guitar in the corner of his closet. He’s not particularly inspired to write at the moment, but he digs in his bottom drawer and finds the stack of old notebooks, all full of lyrics and melodies and basslines, most of them written back in the days of the band, but some are newer. He’s been trying to write again, and even though he doesn’t know if he’ll get anything good out right now, it’s a good break from quantum mechanics.

He’s in the middle of dusting off the guitar he just extracted from the closet when his phone buzzes on the desk, and he unlocks it to open a series of texts from Yukhei.

**xuxi (⌐■_■)  
** _also!  
_ _there’s a concert next weekend that i was gonna go to  
_ _wanna join? :D_

 **marker ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ  
** _what concert?_

 **xuxi (⌐■_■)  
** [screenshot attached]  
 _it’s a pop-up valentine’s day concert :)  
_ _it got announced earlier today  
_ _don’t make fun of me -_- but i’m a big fan of his :D_

Mark taps on the image, bringing his phone closer to his face to read it before, embarrassed, he realizes he can just zoom in. He’s tired, but he gives himself partial credit for still being self-aware. 

To be honest, the announcement is blindingly pink and gaudy, even for just being a digital creation. Mark doesn’t know how they managed to make it look like Clueless threw up on Lisa Frank when it was probably made in Google Drawings, but they managed and Mark is somewhat impressed. 

Despite the appearance, though, the concert seems fine. A couple bucks for an entrance fee to one of the music halls just off campus, clearly catering to the poor, single college student population, and since Mark is a proud member of both of those parties, he can respect it. He tends to match up pretty well with Yukhei’s taste in music, and since Yukhei’s vouching for whoever is hosting this, he’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

And then Mark sees that it’s a screenshot from an Instagram post. The account that posted it? leedonghyuck.

The first thing that goes through Mark’s head is that Donghyuck clearly had no hand in the design of the announcement because it goes against his significantly more bearable typical color pallette.

The realization sinks in and Mark freezes.

He wants to scream and cry and shout and throw his phone at the wall, but he can’t move; his eyes going over the name again and again before his phone buzzes in his hand, and he comes to his senses for long enough to shoot a text back to a concerned Yukhei.

**xuxi (⌐■_■)  
** _mark?  
_ _dude?  
_ _you still there?_

 **marker ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ  
** _il tinkh abuot ti_

He meant to type “i’ll think about it,” but his thumbs tremble so badly that he can’t get the words to come out properly, and he places his phone face-down on the desk before he drops it. He needed to get out a response before he’s stuck in the middle of a full-swing mental breakdown so he didn’t worry Yukhei.

It hits him that he’s been completely and utterly left in the dust, and that any bit of hope still residing in his heart has just been unceremoniously, and rather painfully, ripped out and stomped on. Mark had faith that there was some small part of Donghyuck that still remembered the ten promises they made to each other. 

Most of the promises were juvenile, childish wishes, but the first one had been that they’d make it big together, which is already more or less in tatters. The fourth promise was that they’d get to go on a world tour together some day, see parts of the world they’d never been to and be able to spread their love of music to thousands of screaming fans, having the time of their lives on stage. The ninth one was always the most special to Mark, though. It outlined that they’d get to go to Vancouver, where Mark grew up with his father before Jeno and his mom were part of their lives yet, and they’d write a song just for that stop and they’d perform it together.

The curtains of shock and sadness are pulled aside by that thought, leaving anger and betrayal to take the spotlight in Mark’s mind. He’s angry about a lot of things, actually: angry at being forgotten, anger at being disposable, anger at himself for not being enough, anger at the world for deeming him to be the one to ruin like this.

But then, for the first time in four years, he gets a completely new idea for a song.

Mark swears he’s never moved so fast in his life, grabbing his notebook with the pen tucked into the spiral binding, and his guitar. The lyrics come to him in a way he hasn’t experienced in a long time, all of his feelings just spilling out of the pen as fast as his mind can come up with the emotions he wants to convey, scratching themselves onto the paper in Mark’s curving handwriting rather eloquently.

The right chords fill in the gaps where the words can’t quite reach quite where Mark wants them, choosing a minor key over his usual favorite of D major, using the resolutions from the dissonance to emphasize his hurt, the occasional switch to the parallel major key at the end serving to show how he’s trying to be okay despite the sadness.

And for the first time since The Dreamers took their hiatus, Mark performs.

He sets up his camera that he uses to make fun little videos with his friends, taking out an old microphone from a shoebox hidden away in the top shelf of his closet, and sings out his feelings for the boy he was in love with that left him behind, sings out the hurt that overwhelms his senses, he sings until he realizes there are tears welling up in his eyes and he can’t breathe properly.

Mark can’t really explain why he chose to film it, but his brain doesn’t have too much time to linger it because he uploads it straight from the camera to his Youtube that he hasn’t touched in years — yet miraculously still has thousands of subscribers from when he was actively posting little band vlogs and covers back in high school.

He watches the video upload and sits back, finally assessing how he feels. It’s a lot less anger and resentment than before, once again returning to that hollow ache in his chest that he’s gotten used to feeling whenever he thinks about Donghyuck too much for too long. The video finishes uploading and Mark posts it before he can stop himself.

He sits there, breathing deeply in the silence that rings around his ears, letting everything sink in as he refreshes the page and a single view pops up. It’s not until then that it really hits Mark that people are actually going to see this, so he slams his laptop shut before he can do something smart like delete the video before anyone who might understand it actually sees it.

Mark puts a hand over his mouth, gasping wetly as overwhelming, inexplicable sadness crests and crashes over him all at one, and he tears up again. The anger flares up in the midst of the sorrow, red and hot and ugly. He wipes away the first tears spill over, fueled by that anger — he’s mad at himself for crying over someone who clearly doesn’t care about him, but that thought alone causes the anger to dwindle, more tears sliding down his cheeks. He hasn’t been this close to crying over Donghyuck since the day he found out Donghyuck left, nearly crying in Johnny’s arms. In fact, the thought of calling Johnny crosses his mind now, but he shoots it down because it wouldn’t bring him much comfort or closure — nothing against Johnny.

Mark hiccups, defeated as he sinks down in his desk chair until his head is on the seat, his legs splayed out on the floor, and he’s staring at the ceiling. The tears slip out of the corners of his eyes, crawling over his temples settling in his ears until the whole world is muffled. For the millionth time, Mark’s hand twitches toward his phone to text Donghyuck but he can’t — _fuck_ he can’t… why can’t he, again?

He wants to be able to pick up his phone and dial his best friend to talk things out, but he can’t because of two reasons. One: he blocked Donghyuck and deleted his number a long time ago, and the fact that he still has it memorized after all this time is completely irrelevant because that’s assuming he hasn’t changed it after all this time. Two: Donghyuck doesn’t care about Mark anymore and that was made perfectly clear when he didn’t even tell Mark that he was leaving, abandoning Mark behind with their fallen dreams. 

Mark swallows heavily at that, heaving himself up out of the chair and lumbering to his bed, barely remembering to take off his glasses before sliding under the covers, not bothering to move his guitar off the foot of the bed where he had just recorded himself pouring his entire heart out. Mark realizes that he should probably call his brother in the morning — Jeno always knows what to do, and Mark trusts him more than he trusts himself some days, especially when it comes to matters concerning Donghyuck. He’s always there to help Mark think levelly about things when they get to be too overwhelming and he stops Mark from making any too-rash decisions — he hiccups a watery laugh into his pillow because Jeno probably would have stopped Mark from posting the video. The smile fades quickly as exhaustion drops in on him full-force, and he cries himself to sleep that night, alone in his bed at a school that wasn’t even his plan in the first place.

  
  


* * *

Donghyuck wakes up to his phone blowing up — well, blowing up _more than usual._ He still isn’t used to the popularity after all this time; it’s a foreign feeling in his still-small-town-boy heart. It takes him a moment to come to complete terms with reality as he sits up in bed, blinking hard as he reaches for his phone. He remembers that he announced a couple of pop-up concerts yesterday, so it’s logical to assume that his phone getting insane amounts of notifications has to do with that.

However, when he sees the two missed calls and a text from Lee Jeno, he begins to suspect otherwise. Bypassing all other notifications, he opens the text stream, unsure of what to expect a text from someone he hasn’t talked to in a couple months would say. He certainly isn’t expecting the text to have no words, just a link to a Youtube video sent at four in the morning LA time, and Donghyuck isn’t coherent enough to do the calculation between his time zone and New York’s, but he can definitively say Jeno must have sent it at ass o’clock in the morning unless he’s travelling somewhere.

Donghyuck is already typing out a reply to him asking if he was drunk or if this was a dare when the preview of the video loads and he falls out of his bed, the breath punched out of his lungs.

It’s of Mark Lee holding a guitar, his old Martin D-28 that Mark swore he’d get all his favorite artists to sign some day — Donghyuck’s signature is on the underside of the body, nestled right beside Mark’s own and underneath Jisung’s. At first, he’s mildly surprised he recognizes the pixelated little figure as Mark as quickly as he does, but then he remembers that he spent over a decade being his best friend; a handful of years apart hasn’t changed how well he knows him.

Donghyuck sits up, uncaring of the blankets tangled around his feet as he hastens to open the video, his heart stuck in his throat as he waits for the video to load, actively telling himself to keep breathing.

The first few seconds are of a blank wall splashed with pinks and oranges, giving Donghyuck the impressed that he must have filmed it just the previous evening given that it was only posted nine-or-so hours ago because Mark could never wait too long to post a video otherwise he’d overthink them.

When Mark comes into frame, Donghyuck can’t even find it within himself to be embarrassed about the gasp that rips out of his chest without warning. The fact that he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Mark in somewhere upwards of four years — he blocked Donghyuck’s number and went private on his Instagram ever since the end of his senior year of high school — makes how more grown-up Mark looks so much more apparent.

His hair isn’t bleached or colored anymore, simply back to its natural dark, and he’s wearing those round, wire-rimmed glasses that he used to hate so much, only resorting to them when he forgot his contacts somewhere. His previously softer cheeks have become more defined with sharp cheekbones and a jawline that Donghyuck could reasonably cut himself on. Despite all of the differences he can list off, though, his eyes are still the same — wide, brown, beautiful… although they sparkle a lot less than he remembers. Guilt nudges at his gut, and he can’t help but wonder if that was his fault.

Moving past that, he’s wearing a red Vancouver sweatshirt, and Donghyuck vaguely remembers him saying that his parents insisted he apply to a few universities, just as a backup in case his plans to move to LA with Donghyuck fell through, and that he got into some prestigious university up in Vancouver on scholarship. Guilt gives up on nudging him and full-on drop kicks him across the room. He supposes the deserves that, but it does make him wonder if that’s really where Mark ended up attending college when Donghyuck abandoned him like a coward, not even gracing him with a goodbye before he left. He flinches when he thinks about wording it that way, but that’s exactly what he did, and it’s better if he doesn’t deny it. 

Mark settles on what looks to be his bed, bouncing a little when he first plops down, bringing his guitar into view. He smiles for a moment at the camera before looking away. Donghyuck remembers that he’s always been a little camera-shy, leaving Donghyuck to be the one to coax him into getting on stage some nights when his anxiety became too overwhelming.

They were a team back then.

Donghyuck starts to wonder about what happened, but remembers that it’s all his fault and is quick to clamp down on those thoughts before they can run away with his attention like they often do when it comes to Mark. Just because they may not have seen or interacted with each other in years doesn’t mean Donghyuck doesn’t think about him all the time. 

When Mark clears his throat and speaks, Donghyuck is almost convinced he’s a different person. His voice is lower, smoother, even though by the time Donghyuck had left it has long since passed the stage of cracking embarrassingly. 

“Hey… it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He scratches the back of his neck, avoiding looking straight at the camera. “I wrote a song today… it’s the first song I’ve written since—” he cuts himself and takes a deep breath that catches in his throat.

“Oh, baby,” Donghyuck whispers, wanting nothing more than to reach through the screen and hold his shaking hands. 

“—since high school… since the band, you know? Some things have changed recently, and some things not so recently and I think I reflected on a lot of that in this.” He adjusts his guitar uncomfortably in his lap and shoots another nervous smile at the camera. “There are a lot of things that the band didn’t — or _I_ didn’t tell you when we took the hiatus. We all just… had different paths in mind, I guess, and I think this is a song about that, among other things. So, I hope you enjoy my first completed musical work in almost four years.” He chuckles nervously, fiddling with the guitar in his lap for another moment before taking a deep breath and strumming the first chord.

Mark plays a song that tells of a boy and his heartbreak, of something so much deeper and more raw than Donghyuck has ever heard poured into music before. Unashamedly, Donghyuck cries his way through it, tears blurring his vision and dropping down past his nose and chin and onto the collar of his old t-shirt, which he only now remembers that Mark used to have a matching one of. He bites down on the tip of his thumb, eyes never once leaving the screen.

Donghyuck forgot how sweet and rich Mark’s singing voice is, and how he could listen to him talk for hours, even when he hadn’t gone through puberty yet and he still squeaked now and then, breaking over tougher high notes every so often as he grew into his lanky body.

The Mark in this video isn’t _Donghyuck’s_ Mark, though, and he sees that as he notices the glimmer of tears welling up in Mark’s eyes behind his glasses. 

This is the Mark that grew up in Donghyuck’s absence, the Mark that lost a friend without warning and had his life plans tossed down the gutter all because Donghyuck was, and still is, a coward. This is the Mark that has bottled up so much pain and anguish over the years that Donghyuck can’t even fathom. He’s blown away by everything he’s taking in. He’s always blown away by Mark, though: always has been, always will be. 

More than anything, though, this is also the Mark that still hasn’t forgotten Donghyuck as much as he clearly wants to. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the lyrics are saying, despite the emotional weight they carry as they drift around Donghyuck’s bedroom. They linger on his bedsheets and his clothes and he knows that he won’t be able to get the song out of his head for a long time.

Donghyuck had been so scared to tell Mark he loved him, and it’s all culminated here: Donghyuck crying on his bedroom floor listening to Mark’s heart break hundreds of miles away in some college dorm room. He’d heard Mark tell him two times exactly that he loved him and somehow, both times Donghyuck had managed to shoot him down despite reciprocating. He thought it would just be easier to cut it off cleanly without ever telling Mark, making a clean slate for the both of them once Donghyuck left.

Only it wasn’t clean.

Bits and pieces of Mark still cling messily to Donghyuck’s very soul, torn around the edges as if they were ripped from Mark himself, and the feeling clearly goes both ways given the terrifying amounts of clarity that Mark is giving to the situation right now.

The song ends on a melancholy note, a minor chord, and a watery smile that Mark gives to the camera. The oranges and pinks of the sunset turn to purples and golds slowly, making the tears in his eyes glisten with unmistakable clarity. He murmurs a small thank you, reaches for the camera in a way that Donghyuck can almost picture his hand stretching through the screen so he can lace their fingers together, and then it’s all over and the screen goes dark, leaving Donghyuck with a half-outstretched hand and overwhelming silence.

A second later, Donghyuck scrambles up, rushing out of his bedroom and down the hallway to his living room where he hastily connects his phone to a speaker and replays the video at a higher volume.

Mark’s voice shakily says, “hey,” once again, and Donghyuck slumps down the wall to the floor where he cradles his head between his knee, listening to Mark’s heart break all over again to drown out the sound of his own shattering into pieces.

He didn’t think he could ever be capable of hurting Mark to this extent, let alone that he clearly did. Mark is so sweet and kind and caring and talented, with the purest soul that Donghyuck completely crushed like those coins he and Mark used to put on the train tracks behind their neighborhood to see what would happen when a train ran them over: crushed, blank, unfamiliar.

The song finishes again and Donghyuck is left in silence.

His penthouse is too big, too empty because at the end of the day, no matter how famous he is and how many people he has tagging him in photos or mentioning him in posts, he’s all alone with his mistakes and regrets, knowing that he’s hurt someone so deeply who means the world to him.

Donghyuck raises his head, restarting the video once more before pulling up his texts. He wipes his eyes with the shoulder of his t-shirt, determined to do something at last. Mark used to say, “better late than never,” as some sort of personal motto for his procrastination, and Donghyuck can only hope he still stands by that because he’s going to do everything he can to make this right.  
  


* * *

  
  


Mark wakes up with a pounding headache and a dry mouth, sunlight streaming in through the window he never drew his curtains across last night. He takes stock of himself, making sure everything is still there and together properly as he lets the memories of last night waft through his mind.

His still-damp pillow now makes a lot more sense.

There’s a knock on his bedroom door, interrupting his thoughts.

“Mark?” A muffled voice filters through.

It’s Jeno.

Wait.

It’s Jeno?

“Mark, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” he continues, and Mark is now awake enough to hear the worry stretching between the syllables.

Mark simply lets out a groan in response that Jeno correctly takes as a sign he can come in. The bed dips beside him and fingers run through his hair gently, coaxing him further into wakefulness. He forgot that he gave his brother the spare key to his apartment last time he stayed over.

“I thought you were in New York still,” Mark mumbles, humming contentedly when Jeno scratches his scalp just right.

“I took the first flight here that I could after I saw the video…” he trails off and Mark finally cracks an eye open to see his little brother’s kind face twisted up in confusion and displeasure.

Mark mirrors it without even thinking.

“You saw?”

“Mark, are you _kidding?”_ Jeno’s hand stops carding through his hair. _“Everyone saw!”_

“Huh?” Mark emits a noise of confusion and sits up, feeling around for his glasses.

“Your song is on the Youtube trending page. It has over a million views—” Jeno cuts himself off and checks his phone, “—scratch that, two million views now, actually.”

 _“What?”_ Mark sits bolt upright, knocking his glasses off his bedside table in the process, but Jeno catches them before they can hit the floor, carefully handing them over.

“Our original fan base has been missing us apparently, or more specifically _you._ They’ve put you everywhere, publicized it. Mark, you’re an overnight sensation for _the second time.”_

Mark knows Jeno’s referring to the first original song he ever posted on Youtube. Granted, it was after the band had built up some steam already by doing some covers, but the duet that they did with Mark playing the acoustic and Donghyuck singing ended up garnering over a million views the first day and really launched the band off.

“I don’t want my heartbreak to be publicized, Jen,” he murmurs, frowning. “I posted it because I needed to get it out and move on, not so people could share my pain like some viral trend.”

“You don’t get it.” Jeno turns his screen around to show Mark what he’s looking at. “They all _feel_ your pain. They want him to see it.”

“Him? Who’s him— oh. _Him.”_ Mark’s mind is a bit slow to fill in the blanks, but the moment it catches up he just feels like crying again.

It’s Donghyuck. Their fans want Donghyuck to see it and feel the pain that’s been eating away at Mark’s heart for the past four years. He feels warm all of a sudden, but he’s not entirely sure if it’s from affection or irritation.

“I don’t think I want the public messing in my failed romantic endeavors.” Mark shakes his head.

“Well, some part of you must think otherwise you wouldn’t have posted that,” Jeno implores. “I know you, Mark, and whether you realize it or not, you have a good rationale for this.”

“I would have posted it anyway—” he starts to argue, but Jeno’s having none of it.

“No you wouldn’t. What makes this song any different than the piles of others you hide in the bottom drawer of your desk? All those half forgotten love songs that you started writing about him. What makes this one different?” Jeno’s voice raises a bit, but he drops it down and sighs, his shoulders slumping. “There’s a reason in that big brain of yours, Lee Minhyung. I know what it is, and I think you do too.”

“I…” Mark falters. “I don’t know.”

“It was because you wanted him to _see_ your pain, to let him know that you’re still hurting and this—” Jeno gestures to the video, still pulled up on his phone, “—is the only way you feel like you can get through his incredibly thick skull.”

“He’s not stupid, Jeno, and he’s probably forgotten all about me anyway,” Mark scoffs, turning away.

“Mark, I’m serious.”

“And so am I, Jeno!” he cries. “I don’t want him on my mind anymore. I’m done with this stupid crush following me around for my entire life! I want to be done with it! I want to be done with _him!_ Why does no one seem to understand this?” 

The words settle around them like dust, leaving nothing but silence to fill in the gaps as they stare eye to eye, Mark’s chest heaving and Jeno’s frown growing by the second.

Jeno’s phone rings, the screen still aimed at Mark. It’s Donghyuck. Jeno doesn’t even have to turn his phone around to know that, simply using the panic on Mark’s face as an easy tell.

“Maybe you should tell him that then,” Jeno urges softly, but Mark shakes his head adamantly in return. 

“I just poured out all of my feelings on the subject and I’m emotionally drained. Nothing good can come from us talking, especially not now.”

“You love him, Mark,” Jeno objects. “I know you do.”

“No, I loved him. Past tense. And either way, that’s irrelevant because he doesn’t feel the same, and never did. He’s contacting you, Jen, not me. Who says he even wants to talk to me?”

The phone stops ringing, and Jeno sets it down before he replies.

“Look, I texted him last night when I saw the video, and I’m sure this is response to just seeing it, and I’m sure that—”

“You _showed him?”_ Mark shrieked. “Are you _out of your mind?”_

“He needed to see it, Mark. That was meant for him, and I’m sure that I’m not the only one who sent it to him. I think you’d rather he find out from me than someone else, yes?” Jeno raises an eyebrow. Mark fumes silently, but can’t refute it. Jeno glances down at his phone. “He left a voicemail.”

“Fantastic,” Mark huffs, stumbling out of bed. “You listen to his voicemail, I’ll go shower.”

A hand catches his wrist and yanks him back, sending him tumbling backwards into his blankets again. 

“Please stay, Mark,” Jeno pleads, sighing. “I don’t know if this will have anything to do with you, but just listen, would you? It might be good for you to hear his voice.”

Mark refrains from saying that he hears Donghyuck’s voice on the radio all the time, but he knows what Jeno means: Donghyuck’s true, unfiltered, un-autotuned voice, saying things that aren’t laid out on a lyric sheet in front of him behind the glass walls of a recording booth. He wants Mark to hear the real Donghyuck, but Mark still can’t help the flinch he gives as Jeno unlocks his phone to press play.

The first thing out of the speakers is a shaky breath, then, a voice.

“Oh, it’s going.”

Mark has to close his eyes at the sound of his raw voice. He can tell that it’s changed so much already, and is equal parts glad and devastated that he can’t see what he looks like right now.

“Hey Jen—uh, Jeno. I don’t know if we’re still on good enough terms for me to call you that so… sorry. Bad start. I'm calling about… well you know exactly what I’m calling about. The song, Jeno. Mar—his song,” a muffled sob rips its way through the line and Mark feels his already shredded heart tear into a few more pieces. Despite how much he may not like Donghyuck, he’d never wish any pain or sadness upon him. “I can’t even say his name, Jeno. I don’t think I deserve to, anyway. _Fuck_ I’m such an awful person, and what I did was absolutely unforgivable. _Jesus,_ I can’t even imagine what I put him through, what I put _all of you_ through when I just upped and left without saying a word to him. I knew he was devastated the moment I tried to call him when I landed in LA as some sort of half-assed apology and my call bounced because he blocked me… I’m not surprised… I’d block me too.”

Jeno quirks an eyebrow at Mark, who just shrinks further under his covers. So what if he blocked Donghyuck out of sheer spite when he figured out what happened and then never unblocked him? It doesn’t matter now.

The voicemail doesn’t stop there, though.

“I don’t know how to fix what I did because I ruined him. I took everything we had built together and ran, leaving him with nothing. It’s still so weird without him being part of my songwriting process, without him just being here for me after all these years.” Donghyuck sounds as broken as Mark feels, but Mark can’t cry anymore, not after last night. His eyes sting, and he squeezes them shut harder, focusing on Donghyuck’s grainy voice drift through Jeno’s phone.

“I… I miss him, Jeno, _fuck,_ I miss him so much. I miss _all of you_ so much. I was stupid and selfish and I should have kept us together instead of being what caused us to tear apart in the end. I regret so much and I want to make it right but I don’t know how.” A sniffle echoes around the room, and Mark isn’t sure if it came from him or Donghyuck. “Tell him that I’m sorry Jeno, would you? It’s not enough and I know that, but it’s a start, and I need to start somewhere. I don’t even know how to contact him anymore because he still has me blocked and he put all of his socials on private, but I want to try to rebuild if he’s willing to let me in again.”

Mark sucks in a deep breath at that, hugging himself tighter as he listens.

“The last thing I would ever do is hurt him a second time Jeno, you know that. But, if he doesn’t want to, I’ll live with that. His song… it sounded like a goodbye but I don’t want to give up. Not yet. Not after I’ve messed up so many times, I—I just want to try. I’ll always try for him, for all of you. I just wish I’d realized that sooner, you know?” He gives a choked off laugh. “This is getting long and I’m sorry. Again. But if you could pass my message along to Ma—to _him,_ that would be great. I miss you Jeno, and I’ll swing by to see you and Injun next time I’m out in New York, yeah? Take care, alright? Take care of _him_ for me. He needs to know he’s loved after everything I’ve put him through and I’m afraid that he doesn’t… so, yeah, uh, that’s it… bye?”

The line clicks off and Mark opens his eyes to be met with an unreadable expression on his brother’s face.

“What are you thinking?” Mark asks slowly, scared of the answer he’s going to receive.

“He’s still in love with you,” is all he gets as a response.

“No, he’s not—” Mark stops abruptly as he realizes what Jeno just said. “What the hell do you mean by _‘still’?”_

“That’s not the part of the statement I expected you to question,” Jeno quips in return, amused. “I thought you would be surprised by the whole ‘in love’ portion of that.”

“Do you… _know_ about what happened between me and him back in high school?” Mark asks quietly.

“Other than the rampant sexual tension between you two that was palpable in every single rehearsal? No.”

“We hooked up… _a lot_ — oh my _God_ don’t make that face at me— but it started… my sophomore year, I think? It was under the pretense of getting experience, but we never labeled it and we never told the band because Donghyuck was scared and I didn’t really know what I was doing, so we just kept doing… _things_ in secret until he… when Donghyuck left he didn’t just take my best friend, you know? He took my first love, the boy I was _still_ in love with at the time, and that’s why I took it so hard, I think.”

Jeno processes this in a way where Mark can almost see the gears turning in his head.

“That explains a lot, actually,” he finally says.

Mark levels him with a look and gets out of bed that morning for the second time, careful to stay out of his brother’s grabbing radius. 

“I’m going to go shower and we can talk about this later.” Mark grabs some fresh clothes and a towel from his dresser. “I need a clear head before we talk about this more.”

He opens his bedroom door to head to the bathroom across the hall, but stops short when something catches his eye.

“Jeno…?” he starts, confusion bleeding into his tone.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that I brought some old friends with me.”

There, in Mark’s tiny apartment kitchen, stand Renjun, Jaemin, Jisung, and Chenle, all awkwardly posed around the furniture as if too scared to touch anything. 

“Welcome to Vancouver, Dreamers,” Mark says slowly, leaning against the doorframe, hugging his clothes to his chest.

“And he finally does it after four years!” Chenle cheers. “He called us Dreamers and not Markers completely unprompted!”

The shout sufficiently breaks the awkward tension that had been filling the space until then, and they all give loud whoops in response. Mark can’t help but smile and roll his eyes, too fond of his boys to ever be annoyed at them.

“Make yourselves at home; Jeno knows where everything is. I’ll be back in a few.”

Turning on his heel, he heads into the bathroom and shuts the door behind him, slumping against it. It’s already been an exhausting morning and he’s been awake for all of ten minutes. If he had his choice, he’d head back to sleep for another few hours before dealing with this, but he somehow gets the sneaking suspicion that Jeno wouldn’t like that.

The shower is short and scalding hot, but he emerges feeling distinctly more human than he did before, so he counts it as a win. Mark leaves the bathroom, a towel still slung around his shoulders because he completely forwent drying his hair in favor of going out to see his friends.

The smell of slightly singed toast greets his nose the moment he steps out into the hallway. He sniffs the air audibly as he enters the kitchen, opening his mouth to ask about it just as he sees Chenle standing behind a guilty-looking Renjun, gesturing wildly for him to not say anything. Mark decides that since his apartment is still standing and isn’t in flames, he’ll let it slide.

They’re all circled up around Mark’s cramped dinner table, having dragged chairs from the living room so they could all sit together. As Mark slides into the last open seat, Jeno slides him a plate with a bagel on it — when did Mark get bagels? Or did Jeno get them? And if he did, when? — with cream cheese spread on it just how he likes, so he digs in, listening idly to the chatter around him. He remembers how much he missed mornings like this back in his and Jeno’s house with the band. They’d all be crowded around the island while Renjun and Jaemin were set in charge of the pancakes and everyone else was banned from touching anything in the kitchen while breakfast was made, usually after an overnight that had them staying up way too late. Mark always refused to fall asleep until he knew everyone else already had. 

It takes him back, and he’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing.

“So,” Mark says, polishing off the rest of his bagel. “Why are you all here? Okay wait, don’t answer that. Stupid question. I meant more _how_ are you all here?”

“Well… long story short, Chenle saw the video first. Apparently the little runt never turned your post notifications off after all this time,” Renjun teases, earning a solid whack on the arm.

“Hey! I thought we agreed to not add that part in,” Chenle grumbles, but allows Renjun to continue anyway.

“He texted us in the old group chat that you probably still have muted, and told us that we’d better get our asses on the first plane to Vancouver or he’d send Yangyang after us.”

“What a horrible threat,” Mark deadpans.

“Just because he’s scared of you for whatever you did to him in middle school doesn’t mean he doesn’t terrify the rest of us!” Jisung crosses his arms, defiant. Mark just laughs.

“Jisung and I don’t have school on Monday anyway… some fake American holiday or something, I think, so I bought everyone plane tickets and told them that they’d better make the flights, and now… here we are, I suppose.” Chenle shrugs, gesturing around vaguely. 

“Sometimes I forget how stupid rich you are, Chenle,” Jisung muses. Chenle just shrugs again, uncaring.

“I’m assuming we’re all on the same page with the whole… situation then?” Mark concludes wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin as he looks around the table.

“Yeah… so when are we going to get you and Donghyuck together so you can make up?” Jaemin asks, resting his chin in his palms and peering at Mark from across the table. 

“Woah, woah, we’re jumping ahead of ourselves a little bit here!” Mark raises his hands to stop him. “Who said I want to see him?”

“Uh. You did.” Jisung cocks his head to the side, not understanding.

“When?”

“The whole ‘I loved him’ thing? The sad little whimper you let out when he said he missed you on the voicemail?” Jaemin raises his shoulders slightly before dropping them. “It’s the next logical step in getting you guys back on good terms.”

“I never said anything about wanting to be back on good terms with him,” Mark points out.

“But you _do,”_ Jaemin insists.

“Even _if_ I do, it’s irrelevant. I never said it, and you have no way of knowing.”

“Alright, you two, that’s enough,” Renjun cuts off their little argument before it can escalate. Mark sends him a wink across the table, letting him know it’s all in good fun, and Jaemin sticks his tongue out at him in return, but the smile gives him away. “We should consider our options here, though. Mark?”

“Well, it’s either that I confront him or I don’t confront him. There’s not a lot of grey area in there.”

“Maybe ‘confront’ isn’t the word you’re looking for here… I think it’s more of a ‘hear him out,’ ya know?” Chenle jumps in, eyes jumping between Renjun and Mark worriedly.

“I think that’s putting it a bit lightly, don’t you?” Mark purses his lips.

“He’s made an apology, so I think that should soften your judgement at least a little bit,” Jaemin comments, taking a nibble from his own bagel. 

“There’s a difference between him saying he’s sorry and him actually taking steps to try and remedy anything. Sure, he’s made promises, but I’m not particularly inclined to take anything he says for solid truth at the moment,” Mark retorts. “He’s hurt me enough for a couple of lifetimes, so I’m really not very ready to just go into this headfirst, you understand?”

When he looks around the table at his bandmates for any shred of empathy, the only thing he sees is pity, like he’s some sort of lost little kid who dropped his ice cream, like there’s an easy solution to the thing that’s been tearing Mark apart for years that’ll fix him just like that.

“Alright, look here,” Mark starts, letting his anger get the best of him for a moment. “I appreciate you all coming out, I really do, but if you’re all just going to sit around here and pity me for making decisions that I think are the best for me, then you can show yourselves out.”

“I just don’t want you hurting for the rest of time because of this, hyung” Jeno interjects, the honorific only serving to sweeten the tone of his unwanted concern.

“I posted that song to get closure, Jeno. It’s clear that he moved on without me, without _us,_ a long time ago. It’s high time that I face reality, don’t you think?”

Jeno purses his lips but nods at last.

“As long as you aren’t going to regret this later,” he relents, letting Mark relax back into his chair, unwinding his muscles from the coils his anger built up in them.

“And if I do, that’s not on your conscience, it’s on mine.”

“This shouldn’t weigh on your conscience at all, though.” Jaemin shifts in his seat to face Mark. “You two were meant for each other.”

“He evidently didn’t see it that way.”

“But—”

“I told him I loved him.” Mark slumps down. “When we were back in high school I told him, and he—” Mark chokes himself off. He’s never told anyone this before because it hurts so much to even bring up, opening the old wound freshly each time he speaks the words, blood spilling out of his heart from the now-gaping scar. “I told him I loved him and he walked away both times.”

“He _what?”_ Jeno seems mad but Mark can’t fathom why. It doesn’t make sense.

“Look, it doesn’t even matter anymore. Besides, It was my fault for not getting rid of my feelings and that’s what drove him away. Since they’re not gone now, who says that it won’t do the same thing again?”

“Mark hyung, I adore you with every bone in my body and I think you’re one of the smartest people I know, but _holy shit_ you are such a dumbass sometimes,” Jisung wheezes out between fits of laughter.

“What?” Mark turns to him, brows drawn together.

“He was in love with you too, you idiot,” Jisung replies, plain and simple.

“He wasn’t. Did you not listen to what I just said—”

“He told us about his plans to confess to you,” Jaemin adds, and the rest of the band nods like they were part of this.

“I’m sorry, he _fucking what?”_

“He had this really elaborate plan after the last gig he did with us on that tour — remember how I asked you if Donghyuck had talked to you yet? — I don’t remember all the details now, but I remember him being so excited about it. He thought he was being subtle about it all at first, but it wasn’t hard to catch onto what his plan was about,” Jeno explains. “He had these big red heart balloons hiding somewhere that he was going to give to you, make it all gross and romantic and shit, and we all just assumed that he chickened out as was going to do it before he left. When he didn’t though… it wasn’t our secret to tell. At least until now.”

Mark sits there in complete disbelief, then there’s a moment of silence before Chenle prompts him with a drawn out, “well…?”

“Who says he still has those feelings?” Mark contests slowly and Jaemin groans, letting his head fall down onto the table with a thud, giving up. “If he left me when he still had them, assuming he actually had them in the first place, he can only do worse to me now without them.”

“Mark can you please just talk to him?” Jisung begs. “I hate seeing the two of you like this.”

“The two…?” Mark glances around the table. “You’ve been talking with him?”

“All of us have, except for you,” Renjun tells him carefully, as if afraid he’ll explode if he speaks too loudly. “We’ve all kept more or less in contact with him, although some more than others.”

“Even you?” Mark turns to Jeno who ducks his head in shame. “After all I’ve told you?”

“He was my friend, too,” he defends with a cry. “He left all of us, in case you forgot.”

“But he said _goodbye_ to you!” Mark throws back, furious. “He couldn’t even face me before he left! Do any of you understand what that feels like? It’s the worst kind of betrayal, but then it fucking _stays_ because you thought he was one of the most important people in your life but then it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t feel the same!” He throws his hands up, suddenly drained.

Jeno sits back in his hair, arms crossed. Mark knows there are at least three dozen things Jeno could hurl back at him, each one of them more stinging than the last, but he doesn’t say anything and for that, Mark is glad. He isn’t sure he could handle a pissed-off Jeno right now.

“Look, Mark,” Jisung whispers, standing up from his chair and walking around the table to kneel next to Mark. “You heard his voicemail. He’s absolutely broken up about you, and he has been for a long time, but he didn’t know just how hurt you were by it until you posted that song. Whether his love for you is platonic or romantic doesn’t matter. He’s your best friend who finally realized the gravity of his mistake and he wants to try and fix it, no matter what it takes. Donghyuck is a stubborn bitch, and we all know that, but I think you know deep down, that he’d give you a second chance too.”

Mark looks at his youngest honorary brother, and can’t help but give in at last. He ruffles Jisung’s hair with a smile, pinching his cheek.

“When the hell did you grow up so much, kid?” he has to ask. Jisung just shrugs, settling down onto the floor because apparently he finds it comfortable, and rests his head back against Mark’s knees without another word. Jaemin sends him a weird look, but no one else questions it.

“So…?” Jaemin claps his hands together. “Do we have a final verdict?”

“Can you give him a chance?” Jeno pleads, reaching out next to him to hold Mark’s hand that isn’t carding gently through Jisung’s slightly-overgrown hair.

Mark sighs, long and deep.

“Just one,” he relents.

There’s something in his heart that tells him he won’t regret this. 

Mark tells his heart to shut the fuck up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Donghyuck has never been this nervous in his entire goddamn life. He’s pacing around the kitchen, wiping his palms against his jeans, muttering to himself just to try and keep the silence from getting too loud. He’s been here for nearly an hour already, Jeno picked him up from the airport and drove him straight here. On the way, Jeno had told him that Mark has a lab that runs until two o’clock and he should be back soon after, but it’s nearing two-thirty and the doubts are starting to creep in as if they weren’t doing a good enough job of that already. 

He’s about to reach back and pull his phone out of his pocket to call Jeno when the door handle to the apartment jiggles, and the sound of it being unlocked reaches his ears. He whirls around, leaning back against the countertop, fully prepared to give Jeno an earful for making him wait for so long, when the door swings open and Mark steps in.

Donghyuck freezes, his lips parted, the words telling Jeno off stuck in his throat as he watches Mark struggle another second to take the key out of the lock with the bags of groceries in his arms. It takes Mark until the door shuts behind him for him to finally turn around and see Donghyuck, and he proceeds to drop his groceries out of shock when he does, his jaw falling open to match.

They stand there for a moment, just staring at each other without moving, trying to discern if this is reality or some sort of fever dream. Donghyuck grips the counter behind him until his hand hurts, drinking in as much of Mark as he can: the unripped jeans, the dark hair hidden under a cap, the gold-wire-framed specs that he used to hate so much, the oversized New York sweatshirt that he surely got from Jeno, the familiar little pattern of moles on the side of his neck that Donghyuck used to love to suck hickies onto so much—

“It’s been a while,” Donghyuck starts, cutting off that train of thought as fast as he can.

“Almost four years,” Mark fills in absently, like his mind hasn’t completely caught up with what he’s seeing, but he blinks and shakes his head subtly, and then suddenly he’s all present again. “What the hell are you doing in my apartment, Donghyuck?”

Donghyuck hears the pain in his voice when he says his name, like it hurts him physically to do so, and he understands the feeling. He hasn’t been able to say Mark’s name out loud since he left, the guilt gnawing away at his insides because he doesn’t feel like he deserves to.

“Jeno let me in while you were in your lab…” Donghyuck trails off, dropping his shoulders in defeat. “I flew out here for you.” 

“I appreciate the visit, but I don’t—” Mark starts, but Donghyuck rushes forward until they’re standing nearly chest to chest, the fallen grocery bags the only things separating them.

“They said you’d hear me out, Mark, that’s all I want,” he pleads gently, acutely aware of the way Mark leans back away from him, looking anywhere in the room to avoid meeting Donghyuck’s gaze. “Can you give me a chance?”

“I don’t know,” Mark replies softly, and that’s when Donghyuck realizes that he’s shaking ever-so-slightly, his hands and and shoulders trembling just enough that it’s visible. “I said I would, but I don’t know anymore… it still hurts.”

“The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you, I swear it. Look at me, Mark _please,_ just look at me.” Donghyuck reaches forward to cup the side of Mark’s jaw, but hesitates before their skin makes contact, his hand hovering just to the side of his cheek.

“No.” Mark shakes his head, glueing his eyes somewhere to the left of Donghyuck’s shoulder and keeping them there.

“Why not?”

“Because if I do, I might forgive you,” Mark blurts. Familiarity hits Donghyuck like a speeding train. It takes him a second to recognize it as the same thing Mark said to him years ago, the last time they saw each other, in his old rusty pickup truck in Donghyuck’s driveway.

“You don’t have to forgive me yet, or at all if you so choose, but I just want you to listen. Can you do that?” Donghyuck coaxes, carefully settling his hand on the side of Mark’s face. Mark breathes out, closing his eyes for a moment, giving Donghyuck a few seconds to admire him without any judgement. He really _has_ grown up, all sharp angles and smooth skin, but the imperfections like the acne scars around his hairline and his uneven bottom lip are what make Donghyuck adore him even more. Mark reopens his eyes then, just to stare directly into Donghyuck’s; he doesn’t know whether it happens consciously or not, but Mark leans into his palm. “There you are.”

“Alright, I’ll listen,” Mark promises. “But only if you can walk and talk because you made me drop my groceries and now I have to go get new ones.”

“It’s a deal,” Donghyuck agrees, letting his hand linger for a moment longer than is strictly necessary before dropping it and kneeling down on the floor to collect the few items from the bags that weren’t ruined. 

They don’t follow the deal very well, but at least it’s mutual.

On the way to the store, they talk about everything but what they agreed on: Mark’s classes, Donghyuck’s new affinity for succulents, and everything in between. It would be like they’re best friends again, if it weren’t for the way they both carefully avoid the subject of music or childhoods with unwavering precision. 

It’s not until they’re in the produce aisle and Mark is reaching to find a couple of good oranges that Donghyuck finally speaks what’s been on his mind.

“Mark?”

“Hmm?” he hums in response, picking through the pile of oranges to find one without dark spots. They aren’t in season this time of year, but Mark’s been craving them recently. 

“I want you to open for me at the concert,” he babbles all out in a short breath. Mark nearly falls over onto the orange display but catches himself at the last second.

“No. No fucking way.” He’s adamant about it, but thankfully, Donghyuck’s equally as stubborn and determined.

“Think about it, Mark,” he says. “You have dozens upon dozens of songs up there that you could perform that none of us have ever heard before.” Donghyuck reaches forward, tapping on Mark’s forehead with his index finger. “And… and it’s the closest I will have gotten to performing with you in a long time. Now, more than ever, I’ve been missing it, missing _you,_ Mark. You were always my greatest inspiration, what gave me the best melodies and lyrics because of your incredible brain. I miss working with you.”

Mark is quiet, pursing his lips as he listens to Donghyuck, absently putting a few oranges in the upper basket of the cart as he mulls over the words.

“I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request,” he finally says, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Don’t quote Pirates of the Caribbean—” Donghyuck begins, but Mark cuts him off.

“I said I’m disinclined, not that I wouldn’t. Let me think about it, alright? This isn’t something I’m going to decide on the spot, and my final answer is highly dependent on a few specific factors.”

“Factors such as…?”

“For one, your effort level. You’re trying to make it better, and I can see that, but it’s gotta last. You can’t just give up when it gets hard. As for the second one… we can discuss that later.” With a crooked smile, he turns on his heel and pushes the cart away towards the checkout.

The trip ends with Donghyuck employing slightly questionable tactics to distract Mark so he can pay for the groceries he ruined instead of making Mark pay for it a second time — his tactics include telling Mark he just saw the cutest puppy, and Mark going off to find it so he can pet it. He returns when Donghyuck’s accepting the receipt from the cashier, looks between Donghyuck, the receipt, and the groceries for a moment, before he turns back to him and glares.

“You’re awful.”

“Depends on the perspective.” Donghyuck shrugs. 

Mark doesn’t let him carry either of the bags on the walk back to the apartment despite Donghyuck’s protests. Mark points out that Donghyuck just paid for the groceries, and he was making fun of Mark’s reusable bags not even ten minutes ago, and that gets him to be quiet about it. It ends up being a good thing that he isn’t carrying either of the bags because just as they’re crossing one of the main avenues, Donghyuck gets a call from his manager, Doyoung.

“Hey, Doie, what’s—”

“Donghyuck. Check your texts.”

“I… what?” Donghyuck replies, but the line is dead.

Confused, he unlocks his phone and opens up his messages, ignoring all of the other ones and skipping straight to the stream he has with Doyoung. The message is nothing more than a screenshot of a tweet, and a link to the tweet below. Covering his phone from the sunlight with one hand, he squints at the screen to discern what it is, and nearly trips over himself when he puts it all together.

The tweet has two photos, both of him and Mark laughing at something in the baking aisle of the grocery store, along with “who is @leedonghyuck with here? they’re so cute together :(” as the caption. Although it was posted just a few minutes ago, it’s already blowing up, with dozens of replies and hundreds of likes and retweets.

“What is it?” Mark asks, steering Donghyuck by the shoulder so he doesn’t run into a lamp post while he examines the photo.

“It’s not good.” Donghyuck stops them by the edge of the sidewalk where they won’t be in the way of foot traffic and shows him the screen. Mark’s eyes travel across the screen, a hand lowering the cap over his eyes a bit.

“Do they know it’s me?” he wonders aloud. Donghyuck scrolls through the replies, and sure enough, there’s a keen-eyed fan who has it all figured out. Even with the grainy quality of the photo, they’re still somehow able to piece together that the pattern of moles on Donghyuck’s companion’s neck match Mark’s. “I forget that you’re famous.” The bitterness that crawls through Mark’s words ticks Donghyuck just the wrong way, so he latches onto Mark’s elbow and pulls him a half block ahead to where there’s a small alleyway.

“You either need to say yes or no to the proposal right now, Mark. I need to know.”

“What? Why? In the store you were willing to give me all the time I needed to think? What’s with the change of heart, jackass?” Mark fumes, wrenching his elbow out of Donghyuck’s grip.

“Just answer! If you say no, then I’m gone, I’ll leave right now and we can pretend this never happened, or you can say yes and we can make this work.”

“What’s with the ultimatum? Is there no in between of me choosing not to perform but still wanting to be back in your life?” His voice is low but deadly, each syllable spitting out with venom. “Fuck you, Donghyuck. You don’t get to make the decisions of how we proceed because you did that three years ago, and just look at where it’s landed us.”

“This is my _life,_ Mark, I’m at the point in my career where this kind of exposure can ruin you, and I’m not dragging you into this hellhole unless you’re sure of yourself,” Donghyuck counters.

 _“God,_ Hyuck, you sound just as pretentious as ever, always thinking it revolves around you! Do you actually care what I do or is it just for the publicity?”

“You aren’t the leader here, so stop acting like you have complete control over the situation because you don’t! You have no idea what’s going on!”

“I’m not naive, and I can see right through you, so at least I can say that much,” Mark hisses. “Do you not realize this is the same argument that nearly tore us apart that one summer before high school? Because it really might finish the job this time unless you suck up your massive ego for thirty goddamn seconds and check yourself.”

Donghyuck has a million retorts bubbling up on his tongue, all of them ready to fire, and all of them would result in Mark leaving and never coming back. So, for the first time, he chooses the one thing he would never do: he gives up. After all of the struggling and fighting and hard work that he’s done to get himself where he is, it’s a complete one-eighty to go the complete opposite direction in order to make things better, and his mind can’t fully wrap around it just yet as he slumps back, letting the rough bricks of the alleyway dig into his back.

There’s a long moment of silence between them, Mark’s eyes fiery yet still completely unreadable to Donghyuck, and that’s what scares him the most. If this is what he’s like now… Donghyuck winces, thinking about how much more confused and scared and angry he probably was when Donghyuck left him the first time.

“Mark, I—” He bites his lip, choosing his words carefully. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve said it a lot, but that doesn’t mean I mean it any less. I’ve fucked up enough for a hundred lifetimes already and I’m only in my twenties. I mess up and I run away because that’s the only way I ever learned to do it, and I know that’s no excuse, which is why I’m really here, Mark. I’m asking for your help to be a better person who doesn’t constantly run away from their mistakes when they make them, but instead learns and grows like you always do. That’s what I’ve always admired most about you as my best friend and leader… not that you never made mistakes, but that you always knew how to deal with them and fix the consequences, which is something I never did. I’ve loved you for that, and I always have.”

Mark makes a choked off little sound, but Donghyuck plows on.

“I’ve spent my whole life thinking that this was the only way to go about it, but then you came along and changed that for me, whether you knew it or not, but I was still too scared to ask for help. I only did alright in school when you saw me struggling with something and helped me out despite me saying I didn’t need it because we all know I did. You were always there when I got stuck on a lyric that just wasn’t quite right and you might not have always had the answer for me, but you have me another way to think about things so I came up with it myself. You’ve been the answer to everything I’ve ever needed, Mark Lee, so I’m standing here selfishly to ask you to keep being my answer to everything because I need help, and you’re the only person I trust enough to ask.”

For as far back as Donghyuck can remember, that’s the first time he’s really apologized to Mark. Even after their huge fight, Mark was the one to come back to Donghyuck first with a bright blue slushie from the 7/11 a couple of streets down and a pout as an offering, which he accepted. This is the first time he’s taken responsibility for any of his countless mistakes, and Mark seems to know it too as he stands there in shock.

“Are… you okay?” Donghyuck asks uneasily, craning his neck to see under the bill of Mark’s baseball cap. Mark just blinks back at him.

“I didn’t hear much of anything past when you said you loved me, to be honest,” he admits, sheepish.

“I tried to deny it for a long time, and was a coward who pushed you away, but it only ended up hurting the both of us, hurting _you._ I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember, Mark, no stupid mistake of mine will ever change that.”

For the emotional overload that’s being dumped on him, Mark seems to be taking this pretty well in stride as he nods his head slowly, absorbing all of his words with painstaking clarity that Donghyuck can see in his eyes.

“I loved you too, Donghyuck. Past tense. I don’t know if I still do, and I’m definitely not ready to say it again. There’s a lot of pain still there.”

“You don’t have to say it back now, or ever. You can take forever, if that’s what you need, but I told Jeno that I’d try to mend things with you, and letting you know how I feel is the first step for me.” Donghyuck takes a deep breath. “And I’m going to promise you one thing right now: I’m never, ever, going to leave you like that again.”

Mark shifts both of the grocery bags to one hand and the uses his free one to offer up his pinkie in the air between them. Donghyuck grins, accepting it by hooking his own around Mark’s, and neither of them bother to let go the whole way back to the apartment. When they get inside, Mark busies himself putting away the groceries and Donghyuck finally texts Doyoung back.

**small nuisance  
** don’t worry abt those

**scary doie hyung  
** As long as you’re sure, Donghyuck.  
Did you see the other photos?

**small nuisance  
** no... what are they of

**scary doie hyung  
** You holding hands with that boy.   
Nothing more.  
As long as you know that those are out there and have plans to address them.

Donghyuck glances up from his phone to watch Mark humming as he puts away the groceries in the cabinets where they belong, and he smiles to himself as he types out a quick reply.

**small nuisance  
** yeah, i’ve got plans

He puts his phone on the counter, face-down and on silent so Doyoung can’t bother him again. Donghyuck walks around the small island in the center of the kitchen, leaning back against it as he spectates Mark putting the rest of the food away. There’s something distinctly homey about the situation and it reminds him of the mornings after those chaotic band overnights that Mark and Jeno hosted all the time where Mark and Donghyuck would always be hunched over a notebook together at the counter, scribbling down lyrics and whispering to each other while Renjun and Jaemin made pancakes and Chenle was constantly wrestling Jisung for the pancake with the most chocolate chips.

Donghyuck doesn’t realize how lost in his thoughts he is until Mark clears his throat, leaning back against the edge of the sink behind him, his baseball cap off and his hair pushed back off his forehead by a hasty comb-through with his fingers.

“So…” Mark starts, his hands fidgeting uncomfortably. “I was wondering if… well, I’m not always the best with words, right? So… well, could we, uh… _you know…?”_ He trails off, gesturing vaguely and not quite meeting Donghyuck’s eyes again, which he will have absolutely none of.

“What?” Donghyuck squints at him for a moment, before it clicks and he laughs, which irks Mark a little bit.

“Hey, don’t laugh.” His lips curve downward adorably into a little pout and Donghyuck just grins as he beckons Mark forward.

“Is this your way of asking for a kiss?” He can’t help but tease, enjoying Mark’s reactions a bit too much.

“Oh, stop being so fucking _smug_ about it.” Mark hits Donghyuck on the shoulder with a surprising amount of force. “Maybe I don’t want one anymore.”

“But you do,” he retorts simply.

“Shut up and kiss me already,” Mark complains, and is surely about to continue with some sort of threat when Donghyuck reaches forward and tugs Mark toward him by the hips, and their lips collide without another second spared.

Donghyuck doesn’t know how to put it other than to say it just feels _right._ The way Mark’s body melts against his, how the perfect angle to slot their lips together just comes naturally even after all this time, the way their hands find all of the familiar alcoves and divots on each others bodies again.

Kissing Mark is a lot like making music, now that he thinks about it. The rhythm of the kiss serving as a steady bass line, the circles he rubs into Mark’s hips as the drums, the tugs and releases on his hair serving as crescendos and decrescendos of a melody that—

“Stop trying to make a fucking song while I’m kissing you,” Mark grumbles against his lips, but Donghyuck cracks his eyes open to see that he’s smiling anyway.

“What gave me away?” Donghyuck asks, trailing his lips across the line of Mark’s jaw, leaving fleeting kisses as he goes.

“You’re tapping your foot,” Mark gasps out when Donghyuck nips at the skin at the hinge of his jaw unexpectedly. “Now stop it.”

“Never,” he replies, and then Mark is grabbing his chin again to direct Donghyuck’s lips back to his own, and they’re kissing again. Donghyuck does have to consciously stop tapping his foot, though. Mark bites at his bottom lip cautiously, asking for permission that Donghyuck doesn’t hesitate to grant, pulling Mark’s body impossibly closer to his own while ignoring the way the counter digs into the base of his spine. 

In a bold move, Mark slides a hand under the hem of Donghyuck’s shirt carefully, his fingers brushing along the bare skin just above the waistline of his jeans. In retaliation for the wholly mortifying whine that comes from the back of his throat, he slips his own hands underneath Mark’s sweatshirt, running one hand along his side while the other grips his waist so his sweatshirt is hiked up where it’s caught at Donghyuck’s elbow.

“Are you… swimming again?” Donghyuck wheezes out when Mark starts pressing bruising kisses along the column of his neck. 

“Mhmm, sort of a rec team and not through the school, but it keeps me active.”

“Holy shit I can tell,” Donghyuck breathes, feeling his way across Mark’s torso, pleasantly surprised to find actual muscles there instead of just the skin and bones he was back in high school. It’s a nice change, and it makes Donghyuck considerably less worried about his health. And as much as he knew Mark changed over the time they were apart, doing something so familiar after so long gives time for him to appreciate how he _himself_ has changed, too.

He’s taller now, even if just slightly, but he and Mark now stand at the same height. He finally learned how to style his hair at some point, which Mark promptly messes up, the product crunching a bit between his fingertips in a way that makes them both giggle. He’s grown into his own body, just like Mark has, filling out the hollows of his ribs and stomach that came from his speedy teenage metabolism with something softer that Mark explores with his fingertips, hitching up his shirt as he goes.

Donghyuck ducks down to find Mark’s lips with his own again before he can make any more truly embarrassing noises. The way they kiss is comfortable, familiar in the warmest way, but just as that lovely warmth starts to boil over to something a little hotter, the door to the apartment opens and a cacophony of yells follow immediately.

“I need to bleach my eyes,” Jisung bemoans.

“Scratch that, we need to bleach the entire kitchen,” Renjun snorts. “Who knows what they’ve done and where.”

“I need to know! I have twenty bucks riding on how far they went!” Jaemin whines, and at that comment, Donghyuck finally separates himself from Mark to shoot him a glare over Mark’s shoulder. Mark slowly blinks his eyes open, prolonging the way he trails his hands down Donghyuck’s torso one last time before he finally takes them out from under his shirt, leaving goosebumps in his wake.

The expressions of The Dreamers vary pretty greatly, from Jisung’s mild disgust to Jeno’s smugness and Chenle’s genuine surprise. Jaemin’s too busy filming what’s going on to be able to discern any real expression other than mischievous delight, and Renjun’s fake gagging takes the cake, in Donghyuck’s humble opinion, but that’s mostly because it makes Mark laugh.

“Ah,” Mark says, a blush rising on his cheeks. “Hey guys.”

“I see you two made up,” Jeno says, crossing his arms as he lets the door close behind them finally.

“More like they made _out,”_ Jaemin snickers, putting his phone away. Donghyuck’s sure he’ll have to bribe him to delete it later.

“Shut the fuck up, Na,” Donghyuck calls playfully, and Jaemin throws him a flying kiss in return as he walks over to settle himself down at the dinner table.

“We’re…” Mark hesitates, glancing back and Donghyuck just nods at him, leaving it up to him to decide. “We’re still figuring things out, I think.” He laces his fingers with Donghyuck’s, and they both smile at each other in a way that makes Renjun gag again.

“Alright, that’s enough, you two. Even Jeno and I weren’t that bad when we first started dating.”

“Irrelevant,” Donghyuck concludes, slapping his free hand down on the counter beside him. “But anyway gather ‘round, peasants. I have a proposal to make.”

A crazy week of classes, rehearsals, and club meetings — only one of the three applying exclusively to Donghyuck — follows, and time flies so fast that Donghyuck doesn’t even know what’s going on. Mark accepts his idea of being the opening act for the show, and they announce it to the public, but what they don’t reveal is that The Dreamers have a special encore performance they’re planning. 

Somehow, Jisung and Chenle finagled their way out of their own freshman university classes for the week so they could stay up in Vancouver for rehearsals, and it’s a given that Jeno, Renjun, and Jaemin are all going to stay if the younger two are. Mark is the only one who does anything even remotely academic that week, and they all heckle him for it. Somewhere in the middle of the week, Mark manages to drag Donghyuck out to the gym despite his protests, and he meets a friend of Mark’s named Yukhei who he ends up giving both his signature and a follow on Instagram after hearing that he’s more or less the catalyst of the whole thing.

Between everything that goes on, Mark and Donghyuck spend every extra second together that they can. They both know that after this week, Donghyuck has to leave to go do performances and some recording sessions back in LA and they won’t see each other for a while, so they make up for it now. Jisung and Chenle have taken over the living room to crash in — the other three rented an air bnb for the week, if Donghyuck remembers correctly — so they do have to keep both their late night songwriting and kissing escapades at a low volume. 

Nothing goes farther than that because they’re both exhausted, but Donghyuck thinks he’s the luckiest man in the world when he falls asleep each night that week with Mark in his arms, something he would have thought was no more than a dream just a couple weeks ago. 

The concert arrives all too fast, though, and it’s almost over way too quickly. Time slips through Donghyuck’s fingers, and before he knows it, he’s standing in the wings, watching Mark sing to a crowded concert hall of thousands of cheering fans, a good portion of them here to see Mark more than Donghyuck himself; he’s a lot more okay with that idea than he originally thought he would be.

To be honest, Donghyuck never thought he would get to see Mark perform again — at least not personally. He stands in the dark, just shy of where the stage lights fall, and watches in awe as Mark charms the audience like he always does. His chest bubbles up with a kind of warmth he hasn’t felt in a long time, and rues the moment where this all comes to a close.

Mark agreeing to this insane idea in the first place had already been beyond Donghyuck’s highest hopes when he first thought of it, let alone having things go this far uphill so fast, but he’s indescribably glad that it did. The joys of being at the point in fame where he can pick and choose where he wants to perform gives him not only chances to explore the parts of the world that he wishes, but it somehow gave him the chance to reconnect with Mark after all this time, and by extension, watch him do what he loves again.

Mark sings some of his old songs for his act, all things that Donghyuck heard in rehearsals earlier that week and loves, but as a final song, he announces something off-script completely. Or, at least it’s something that no one ever told Donghyuck about.

“So, for this last one as a little Valentine’s Day tribute, I’m going to sing an old favorite of mine. Sing along if you know the words.”

And Mark proceeds to do an acoustic cover of Paramore’s _Still Into You._

Donghyuck puts his hand over his mouth as he watches Mark cater to the crowd, sometimes singing, sometimes pausing to let their singing fill the hall, but without fail, every time the words “still into you” are sung, Mark looks straight back into the wings at Donghyuck. He wants to throw all caution to the wind and run out on stage to kiss him in front of the thousands of audience members that have come from far and wide, but he doesn’t. 

Instead, after Mark finishes and says goodbye to the crowd, he rushes backstage to hug Donghyuck, his guitar still in his hands. They only have a moment together before the stage crew is ushering him away and The Dreamers all congratulate Mark on the performance.

Normally when Donghyuck performs, his mind is completely blank except for the sounds of the music and the crowd fueling him on, the countless repetitions of his own lyrics paying off as he knows them better than he knows the back of his hand. But tonight, it’s not the beat or the cheers that keep him going. It’s the glimpses he gets of Mark backstage grinning, his eyes shining brilliantly as he cheers loud enough to be heard over the roar of the rest of the auditorium, standing next to The Dreamers who are all doing the same.

He finishes off the main performance with one of his older songs, _Bye My First,_ and the entire hall absolutely erupts. Even with his in-ears still secured in, it’s nothing short of deafening in the best way possible. He waves at everyone, picking up the roses thrown on stage, along with a pride flag and a couple of teddy bears holding hearts. He blows a kiss out to the audience, and the lights go down.

Donghyuck rushes off stage to deposit the gifts, speaking into his microphone all the while.

“We have a special encore for you tonight, Vancouver! Please give a warm welcome to… _The Dreamers!”_

Donghyuck can feel the vibrations of the cheers in the floor backstage and he can’t help but grin as he jogs back out. The crowd goes quiet as a single spotlight hits Jeno at the drums, and Donghyuck looks back to see him holding a finger over his lips before he holds his sticks up in the air, poised for a countoff.

 _“Jeno Lee you’re the love of my life!”_ Someone in the crowd screams, making him grin as he calls off the count into his mic.

The lights come back up to the sounds of _Go,_ some angsty psychedelic rock tune that Donghyuck and Mark cranked out one evening in high school when they’d felt particularly inspired. They only perform three songs as an encore, two of them being their own — they’d selected _Go_ and _1, 2, 3_ after a long debate that ended up with a ripped couch cushion and Chenle threatening to strangle Renjun instead of the usual vice versa — and the other one being Queen’s _You’re My Best Friend,_ which Donghyuck and Mark unanimously decided on and no one decided to dispute it.

The audience, for lack of a better term, eats it all up completely. When the concert ends, for real this time, they cheer for more, an encore of an encore, but everyone’s given all that they have tonight. They’ve left their hearts up on that stage together, and there’s no other way that they’d want it. 

They all pile back into the dressing room after that, and Donghyuck gets the weirdest sense of déjà vu as they crash through the door, throwing themselves onto the plush couches. He doesn’t have much time to pay attention to it because they’re all singing some Beatles song that he can’t pull the name of off the top of his head, Mark’s head is tucked into the side of his neck as they claim a whole couch just for the two of them. As he presses a gentle kiss to the top of Mark’s head that makes him smile against Donghyuck’s skin, all seems to be right with the world.

* * *

  
  


**leedonghyuck has started a live video!**

“Hey everyone!” Donghyuck’s face appears on screen as he greets the rapidly growing audience with a wide smile. “I’m gonna wait a little bit before I make the announcement so we can have some more friends join us.”

He settles his phone against something on a countertop and seats himself on a stool that spins around. Twisting back and forth, he talks to the camera a bit about his morning.

“I’ve been up for a bit because I was getting ready for this, and _oh!_ I forgot to mention this earlier but thank you so much for a hundred million views on _Heartbreaker!_ That’s absolutely crazy, and I almost yelled when I woke up to that this morning! I didn’t even know we were that close!”

“That close to what?” A rough voice comes from off camera somewhere that has Donghyuck whipping his head up and smiling brilliantly. “Good morning, baby, how are you?”

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Donghyuck replies, his eyes crinkling at the edges because of the grin. “I’m still a little tired, but nothing out of the ordinary. How about you?”

“Tired, too,” the voice chuckles. “Let’s just go back to bed, hmm?”

“I can’t, I have an audience now.” Donghyuck gestures to the live video on his phone, where the comments are currently all blowing up about who the other person is.

“Are you really streaming right now?” The voice raises in pitch, incredulous “This _early?”_

“It’s nearly eleven, and we have things to do today, silly,” Donghyuck laughs, reaching out of the frame to tug a disheveled, shirtless Mark back with him. 

“But it’s the weekend!” Mark lets out an almost inhuman noise of protest along with the words, but Dnghyuck simply reaches up to tap Mark’s lips and then his own in reply. Mark seems to understand, rolling his eyes pointedly at the camera before leaning down to kiss Donghyuck gently on the lips. He moves to break the kiss, but Donghyuck puts a hand in his hair that keeps him there for an extra moment, Mark’s body blocking the camera’s view of the kiss itself. “Now that I’ve fulfilled my morning kiss quota, may I go put on a shirt, oh mighty one?” Mark mocks when Donghyuck finally lets him go.

“No, I think I like you like this,” Donghyuck teases, raising an eyebrow as he splays a hand over Mark’s toned chest. Even the questionable camera quality can pick up how red Mark’s entire face goes as he swats Donghyuck’s hand away.

“Shut up,” he hisses, but Donghyuck just giggles, pulling Mark down for another kiss before pushing him away off-screen. 

“Come right back because we have something to announce!”

“We do?” Mark calls back, confused.

“Yeah, idiot, the thing we’ve been… _you know!”_

“Oh! Right!” he replies, noticeably less confused for a moment before it returns in full swing. “Wait, we’re doing that now?”

“Yeah, dumbass!”

“But I’m your dumbass!”

“Sure, sure, whatever.” Donghyuck waves his hand dismissively before leaning into his phone conspiratorially. “He’s definitely mine but I’m not going to inflate his ego anymore. And oh _man_ he looks so good in the mornings I could just look at him all day.” His eyes scan over the comments as he speaks. “Yes, he’s an absolute idiot sometimes, but he’s the one with an engineering degree, so I’ve gotta be careful what I say, ya know? And he’s lucky he’s cute and is good with kids and can sing and play the guitar and I love him because that boy would be so screwed otherwise.” He says it all with a fond smile, and it’s clear to any viewer that he’s in absolutely smitten.

“Are you talking about me?” Mark asks, voice growing clearer as he slides into view, finding a perch on the stool next to Donghyuck’s, a worn, old Dreamer's t-shirt now covering his torso. “I heard something about the guitar and lord knows you can’t play so—”

“Oh, shut up,” Donghyuck gripes. “Just because you’re perfect in every way doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

“Hey now,” Mark scolds with a frown. “I’m not perfect, and neither are you, but I love you nonetheless, alright?”

“Oh, sh—” Donghyuck nearly falls off his stool and cursing muffled as he catches himself. “I forgot something. Mark, entertain. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait what? No! What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Mark panics. “I’m not good at this stuff!”

“Just answer some questions in the comments or something! I’ll be back in like five minutes, tops, I promise.” Donghyuck plants a chaste kiss to the crown of Mark’s head.

“I’m going to start a timer,” Mark threatens, waving a finger comedically, “and if it goes over five minutes then…” he pauses to think about it before he leans over and whispers something into Donghyuck’s ear that the camera doesn’t catch. Donghyuck’s eyes widen when Mark pulls away, looking smug.

“You wouldn’t dare…” 

“Try me.” Mark crosses his arms, challenging. They stare each other down for a moment until Mark simply raises an eyebrow, and that has Donghyuck scrambling out of his chair as fast as he can, leaving a laughing Mark in his wake. The comments go nuts with theories about what was said, but Mark just chuckles as he leans in closer to the screen, glossing over it entirely. “So… any questions for me?”

**@hyuckios  
** which of hyuck’s songs is your favorite?

“Ah, that’s tough…” Mark scratches his chin. “Are you talking just his solo songs or out of every song that he’s worked on? Because the answer’s different, I think.”

**@solhyuckie  
** tell us both!!

“Alright, alright, so for solo songs… honestly Superhuman has got to be my favorite even though it hasn’t been released to you all yet. It’s fun and upbeat, but it’s also honest and the lyrics are really meaningful. As for any song he’s ever written… I’m completely biased on this one but it’s got to be Goodbye Summer. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the first original song that Hyuck and I wrote together and posted, and it was really special to me even before it gained a bunch of popularity.” Mark turns a little pink around the ears when he talks about the two of them working together, not quite about to look straight at the camera.

**@honeyyhyuckies  
** that’s adorable :((( do you still help hyuck write songs?

“I do still help him write songs, yeah! I’m credited in all of the ones I had a hand in, more because Donghyuck insists than me. Oh, and fun fact, there are a couple songs that Donghyuck has put out recently that were originally written for and by The Dreamers but were scrapped, so the band as a whole is credited as a writer, which I find kind of funny because we all know that Jeno doesn’t do squat in the songwriting department. I think 119 and Fever are the two that are like that, but I might be missing one.”

**@hyuckini00  
** songs are cute and all but ngl i’m here for the kittens… how are they?

Mark absolutely lights up when he sees a question about the cats, and he doesn’t even try to hide his smile.

“They’re doing wonderfully! Oh wait, okay, so, for context, Hyuck and I adopted two kittens last month named Milo and Lucy, and they’re the literal lights of my life I’d do absolutely anything for them and— oh, look, here’s Lucy now!” Mark bends down out of frame for a moment, returning after a moment with a small bundle of fluff cradled in his palms, cuddling it against his chest gingerly. “This one is Lucy, and she’s mine, and Milo is Donghyuck’s. I think he’s sleeping otherwise I’d go grab him, but he’s grumpy if you wake him up too early just like his dad.”

Mark presses a kiss to Lucy’s tiny, pink nose. She wriggles in his grip a bit.

“They were both rescues, only a couple of months old now, and I love them both with my entire heart,” Mark says adoringly, and Lucy lets out the tiniest little meow right then, pawing at Mark’s collar, and he just absolutely fucking melts. The comments go wild over it. He looks back at the camera with veritable hearts in his eyes. “Sometimes I see Donghyuck in his studio with his sweatshirt on backwards so he can have Milo and Lucy cuddled up in his hood while he does work… they all make me so happy and I have no idea what I’d do without them.”

**@hyuckieee  
** what are some of your favorite things besides hyuck and the kittens? like ice cream flavor or color?

“Sure! Although my favorite ice cream flavor isn’t exactly ice cream, it’s watermelon sorbet, and my favorite color is blue. Any type of blue, though, I’m not picky. Umm… my favorite restaurant is this little family-owned sandwich shop just off campus where I attended university.” He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, that’s all I got.”

**@badboyhyuck  
** how did you know when you were in love with hyuck?

“That’s a change of pace,” Mark whistles between his teeth sharply, sitting back on the stool, thumbing over the back of Lucy’s head thoughtfully. “The question was how did I know I was in love with Donghyuck… and to be honest, the answer isn’t that simple. I think I always loved him, you know? We’ve been friends since grade school, and I think I always knew deep down that there was something more there… then through everything that happened with the band to him leaving to us finding each other again during the whole Valentine’s concert debacle… four years ago, was it? It was a slow process for me to work past all of the insecurities and pain, which still hang around a bit and we still work on together, but to be honest, me realizing that I really loved him just took him being there for me while I learned to love myself again first.”

Mark takes a deep breath, adjusting a squirming Lucy before continuing.

“It wasn’t easy, if that’s what you’re trying to ask, but he was there with my every step of the way, and it made me realize that the love between us wasn’t just going to fade with time, and that ignoring it would only hurt us — hurt _me_ more in the long run. So, I remember one day I came home from a particularly tough day at work and he was just there for me with a pint of watermelon sorbet and two spoons and that stupid smile of his, and I told him I loved him just like that. It just felt like the right thing to do.” Mark laughs to himself. “He cried when I told him, you know? Straight up broke down into tears, and he’s probably going to kill me for telling you all this, but whatever. He said a lot of… really heartfelt things that I won’t say here, but he said he was so scared of losing me again, so I promised I wouldn’t leave, and now here we are.”

“Where are we?” Donghyuck pants, completely out of breath as he slides back into view of the camera. He hops up onto his stool, and gives Lucy a little scratch behind her ears that has her purring loud enough for the phone to pick it up.

“You’re going to wear holes in your socks if you keep doing that,” Mark scolds, raising an eyebrow.

“You sound like your mom.” Donghyuck grimaces, but rubs a thumb over Mark’s knuckles affectionately. “Was I under five minutes?”

“I don’t know,” Mark admits with a shrug. “I wasn’t timing you.”

“You…!” Donghyuck whacks his arm. “Are you kidding me?”

“The announcement, Hyuck?” Mark steers them back on track to the reason why the livestream started in the first place.

“Oh! Right! So!” Donghyuck claps his hands together. “Mark and I are releasing a song together!”

The entire audience goes ballistic in the comments. Donghyuck’s phone almost crashes from the slew of texts that come in from his friends in the following moments; this has been a project secret to everyone but the two of them.

“You’re just going to dump it on them like that? No preface?” Mark makes a face, astounded. “Look at what you’ve done.” He gestures to the stream of comments now scrolling by so quickly they’re impossible to read. “You’ve gotta ease them into it!”

“I enjoy the chaos,” he replies simply, shrugging. “I just wanted to say thank you to all of you guys for supporting me through all of this insanity, but most of all, I wanted to thank my friends who have stuck with my sorry ass too. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’m one lucky guy to have you guys who forgave me and helped me grow, and I wouldn’t trade you guys for the world.”

Mark leans over and plants a kiss on Donghyuck’s cheek when his voice cracks, his eyes no longer able to meet the camera directly as he speaks. It’s not often that Donghyuck gets vulnerable like this with an audience, mostly leaving the sappy stuff to Mark in their social media interactions, and the viewers absolutely love it. 

“And The Dreamers are getting back together for a reunion album later this year,” Donghyuck announces without an ounce of shame.

“Hyuck are you fu—” Mark starts to shout.

Donghyuck’s phone crashes. 

**leedonghyuck has ended the live video!**

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading this absolute disaster aND EVEN BIGGER THANK YOU to my friends on twitter who have hyuck-related @s that i stole for the purpose of the fic (yes, all of those accounts are REAL PEOPLE) so you should go give them some late valentine's love!! and also lucy and milo bc they're wonderful people too (@idoldimples and @outfeet on twitter respectively)  
> i love you allllllll
> 
> come yell at me on my socials about anything <3  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/baridalive)  
> [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/baridalive)  
> [tumblr](https://baridalive.tumblr.com)


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